One Soft Infested Summer

Fiction | Thriller
Pub Date: September 2026
6 X 9 in | 500 pgs
Trade Paperback: 978-1-997529-10-1 
e-pub:  978-1-997529-11-8 

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Brothers Milo and Woe—gifted with strange psychic abilities—must confront the malevolent force threatening to consume their once idyllic neighbourhood of Kinder Hill. Children are disappearing and they can help.

Fast forward to 2019, Miller Hackney—a failed writer and failing member of the human race—abandons his final novel to chase a faceless child in a green raincoat through the alleys and subway tunnels of Toronto. These two stories, seemingly worlds and decades apart, are drawn inexorably to a collision at the bottom of all labyrinths.

Blending the nostalgic adventure of The Goonies with the psychological suspense of Daphne du Maurier’s Don’t Look Now, One Soft Infested Summer is an epic story about found families, the horror of loss, and the redemptive magic of storytelling.

Praise for One Soft Infested Summer

In this long-awaited sequel-of-sorts to The City Still Breathing, Matthew Heiti takes us on fantastic adventures through gritty streets, magic transit stations, and abandoned ravines. These memorable characters—psychic children battling monsters, and a failed writer slaying his  demons— collide in a cinematic and trippy story about forgetting and remembering, coming home, and the epic struggle to save ourselves and those we love.

—Farzana Doctor, author of Seven and The Beauty of Us

About the Author

Born in a meteor crater, Matthew Heiti is a Genie-nominated screenwriter, a playwright and creative writer living in Sudbury, Ontario. He has published drama and fiction including his first novel, The City Still Breathing, (2013, Coach House Books) and Black Dog: 4 vs the wrld (2016, Playwrights Canada Press). His short fiction has been published in magazines, journals, and anthologies, winning several distinctions, including the Carter V. Cooper award and Grain Magazine’s short fiction prize. He teaches Creative Writing at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario where he lives. More about his writing can be found at harkback.org