Mad Cave Studios’ Maverick imprint has announced Listen, a new young adult graphic novel from writer Brian Hawkins, illustrator Sandra Maria Perea, colourist Rebecca Nalty, and letterer Chas! Pangburn. Blending mystery with a deeply personal story of loss and recovery, Listen follows a teenage girl whose hearing loss leaves her connected to a strange frequency and the deaths occurring around her. The book is set to release on December 15, 2026.
How do you survive grief?
A teenage girl survives a horrible accident that changes her forever and allows her to “hear” Death. Unable to face life after the horrible car crash that took the life of one of her best friends and caused her significant hearing loss, Xiara Jackson leaves her preparatory school and goes back home to live with her parents as part of her recovery only to begin hearing a strange humming sound. When she learns the sound she’s hearing is being investigated by a former storm chaser curious about cymatics and that the sound is connected to other strange events in town, including some suspicious deaths, Xiara sets out to find the source of the sound, why she’s the only one that can hear it, and how the sound is connected to death to stop it before it happens again.
“I wrote Listen from a very personal place and so part of reading Listen will be experiencing how horror helps to heal,” expressed writer Brian Hawkins.
Hawkins is a freelance writer, educator, and Knower of Self. Perea is a comic book artist from Sevilla, Spain, whose previous work includes projects for Blue Ocean Entertainment, Titan Comics, and Z2 Comics.
Combining a supernatural mystery with themes of grief, bereavement, and the difficult path toward recovery, Listen is a 200-page graphic novel for young adult readers drawn to emotionally grounded stories where personal trauma and unexplained phenomena collide.
The publisher has also debuted a series of preview pages which you can read below:
Listen (paperback, ISBN: 9781545832141 | $16.99) goes on sale December 15, 2026. The direct market final order cutoff is November 23.
