The Upper Tentacle

The admin for a corporate retreat and a body-splitting alien team up to solve the murder of the company’s president at a closed ski resort before their alien overlords inflict dire consequences for humanity’s collective insubordination.

Nia would probably rather be anywhere than a closed ski resort, supporting Hugh Callahan, the president of Crestone Learning, at a company retreat. As the only admin, she is responsible for pretty much everything, from making sure that meals are on time, to preparing speeches—and also apparently solving the murder of the aforementioned and newly deceased Hugh Callahan, who was found murdered in a resort hot tub.

Meanwhile, Khearozoth, a 4th level subordinate class of shelgol’gah—the dimension-traversing, body-splitting, entity-eating alien species that has been taking over Earth, one megacorporation at a time— had one job at the retreat: to make sure that Hugh appropriately honored their master, the prodigiously hungry Greatest Supreme.

When the Greatest Supreme learns about Hugh’s death, they task Khearozoth and Nia with finding the killer. Now this unlikely pairing must work together to solve the murder—because there is a killer on the loose, and the Greatest Supreme does not brook disappointments…

• "The Upper Tentacle is short enough to consume in one sitting, and funny enough to linger over. It's an original and satisfying look at what can happen after the rich have been eaten. Murder mystery, corporate espionage, wit, wisdom, and Ak-Gorug, Wondrous and Terrible Greatest Supreme Level Five of the shelogol'gah; The Upper Tentacle has everything you need. All hail the shelogol'gah!"
  Tanya Huff, Aurora Award winning-author of Direct Descendant and Saved by the Spell
• “A terrific debut novel. Helms takes the amateur detective story, adds a side of alien post-invasion, and spices it up with an engaging duo of protagonists. A story worthy of consumption by the Wondrous and Terrible Greatest Supreme Ak-Gorug themselves. So you'll probably like it too.”
  A. Lee Martinez, Alex Award-winning author of Gil’s All Fright Diner and Unbearable
• “The more you think about this book, the worse it gets (complimentary)! If you like your horror layered, funny, and anti-capitalist, with a central murder mystery, this is for you! Miss Marple with tentacles, 10/10.”
  Eli Snow, author of The Divine Gardener's Handbook
• "Helms deftly intersects the casual horrors we accept as banal in corporate culture with new, eldritch ones, using a cast of characters you simultaneously want to laugh at and root for. The Upper Tentacle is entertaining, hilarious, and witty, in the same vein as Knives Out and The Sheep Detective, all while illuminating things about being human that only extraplanar entities could."
  Craig Lincoln, co-author of The Formation Saga