A Choir of Ill Children

A Choir of Ill Children is a horror novel by the American writer Tom Piccirilli, first published in 2003. It belongs to the Southern gothic tradition.

Its setting is Kingdom Come, a decaying backwater in the swamps that draws in the lost, the ill-fated and the damned. Thomas has looked after his three brothers since his mother disappeared and his father killed himself, and the brothers are conjoined triplets with separate bodies and a single shared brain. He also runs the Mill, which is the only industry the town has left.

Because of who his family is, the superstitious people of the swamp both fear and respect him. The granny witches of the town cast their hexes, his childhood sweetheart drifts through his life like a vengeful ghost, and his best friend, a reverend who suffers from the power of tongues, is overcome by his own curse while he tries to warn Thomas of what is coming.

All Thomas learns from any of it is that the carnival is coming. The novel follows him as he faces both the forces moving towards Kingdom Come and the past he has been carrying with him, and it is a story about loss and about the possibility of redemption as much as about the town.