The Nesting Site - Amy Wertz

When Alison Romano inherits a decaying Brooklyn apartment building, she believes she's been given stability. Instead, she inherits a covenant older than the city itself-one that binds the owner to the building through biological transformation.

As developers close in and eviction pressure mounts, Alison's body begins to change. Heat replaces memory. Scales replace skin. She learns the truth buried in the foundation: the building has survived for over a century by consuming its guardians, turning people into weapons to preserve property at any cost.

Protection works-briefly. But the faster Alison defends the building, the faster she disappears. To save what remains of herself, she must choose between becoming the perfect guardian or walking away and letting the cycle continue.

The Nesting Site is a literary gothic speculative novel about housing as extraction, protection as consumption, and the devastating cost of systems that endure by devouring those who serve them.

For readers of Mexican Gothic, The Overstory, and Annihilation.