金石堂“Brilliantly dark, captivating.”—Elizabeth Hand on Good Girls
Librarian Emilia is alone in a library that is soon to close its doors forever. Alone save for one last patron, his head completely swathed in bandages, his hands gloved, not one inch of skin exposed. Emilia feels sorry for him—like her, he is always alone.
Today, he sees, really sees, Emilia.
What he does to her then is unspeakable.
Thousands of miles away, another victim rises—a dead woman who still lives. Sophie is determined to protect the people she loves best in the world—but she is a monster.
To Jess, it doesn’t matter that Sophie was once as close to her as her own daughter. It doesn’t matter that Sophie’s baby died so that Jess’s grandson could live. It only matters that Sophie is a vampire.
Vampires can’t be trusted.
Even if they love you.
Aunt Sally loved all the monsters she’d created in the hundreds of years since she died and rose again. She loved her home in the bayou.
When her existence was exposed to the human world, she didn’t hesitate to destroy her home, and her offspring, to save herself. Herself, and one special girl, Aunt Sally’s last chance to be a perfect mother.
These people are drawn together from across the United States, bound by love and hatred, by the desire for reunification and for revenge.
In their own ways, they are all monsters.
Some deserve to live.
Some do not.
Glen Hirshberg’s critically-acclaimed trilogy comes to a shattering conclusion that proves that this International Horror Guild and Shirley Jackson Award winner understands the true depths and heights of this thing called life.
