The Lord of the Wood by E. M. Anderson

The cozy horror/fantasy mashup of T. Kingfisher meets Beauty and the Beast in this magical queer novel about a man who, while journeying through the creepy shifting woods that have claimed many lives—including his father’s—ends up on a mission with The Lord of the Wood to save a dying forest.

The cozy fantasy of TJ Klune meets the creeping horror of T. Kingfisher in this magical novel about a man who enters a deadly enchanted forest expecting it to endanger his life, but not his heart…

Clockmaker Arthur Throckmorton lives a quiet life with his sister and her children, only dreaming of adventure. So when a wealthy client offers him a job that involves traversing Shiftleaf—an enchanted forest that claimed his father decades ago—he reluctantly accepts. The forest is treacherous, but the money will change his family’s lives.

The journey quickly turns perilous. Fleeing from monstrous birds, Arthur stumbles upon a hidden vale where he meets the Lord of the Wood—a figure from his father’s many stories. Instead of the fairy prince Arthur always imagined, Ira is a morose man, slowly transforming into a beast, his power over a dying forest waning.

Arthur enjoys the safety of the vale, and Ira’s company. But he yearns for his family. To safely return home and rescue Ira from a cursed and lonely existence, Arthur and Ira must reach the heart of the wood to heal the forest. Except the further they venture from the vale, the more beastly Ira becomes. If they can’t complete their mission before he turns completely, Arthur could lose the man he’s falling for—and never see his family again.