The Monsters We Deserve

'Do monsters always stay in the book where they were born? Are they content to live out their lives on paper, and never step foot into the real world?' The Villa Diodati, on the shore of Lake Geneva, 1816: the Year without Summer. As Byron, Polidori, and Mr and Mrs Shelley shelter from the unexpected weather, old ghost stories are read and new ghost stories imagined. Born by the twin brains of the Shelleys is Frankenstein, one of the most influential tales of horror of all time. In a remote mountain house, high in the French Alps, an author broods on Shelley's creation. Reality and perception merge, fuelled by poisoned thoughts. Humankind makes monsters; but who really creates who? This is a book about reason, the imagination, and the creative act of reading and writing. Marcus Sedgwick's ghostly, menacing novel celebrates the legacy of Mary Shelley's literary debut in its bicentenary year.

For fans of Rene Denfeld and Shari Lapena comes a rich, atmospheric family drama set in the 1980's following the disappearances of two paperboys from a small midwestern town. It's August 1984, and paperboy Christopher Stewart has gone missing. Hours later, twelve-year-old Sammy Cox hurries home from his own paper route, red-faced and out of breath, hiding a terrible secret. Crystal, Sammy's seventeen-year-old sister, is worried by the disappearance but she also sees opportunity: the Stewart case has echoes of an earlier unsolved disappearance of another boy, one town over. Crystal senses the makings of an award winning essay, one that could win her a scholarship - and a ticket out of their small Iowa town. Officer Dale Goodkind can't believe his bad luck: another town and another paperboy kidnapping. But this time he vows that it won't go unsolved. As the abductions set in motion an unpredictable chain of violent, devastating events touching each life in unexpected ways, Dale is forced to face his own demons. Told through interwoven perspectives--and based on the real-life Des Moines Register paperboy kidnappings in the early 1980's--The Monsters We Make deftly explores the effects of one crime exposing another and the secrets people keep hidden from friends, families, and sometimes, even themselves.

Marcus Sedgwick, autor bestseller internacional, escribe sobre los monstruos que hemos creado, tanto en laliteratura, como en nuestras propias mentes, en esta reinterpretación del Frankenstein de Mary Shelley. ¿Los monstruos siempre se quedan en el libro en el que nacieron? ¿Están conectadas a la vida exterior sus vidas del papel y nunca ponen un pie en el mundo real? 1816, Villa Diodati, a las orillas del Lago Lemán: el Año sin Verano. Mientras Byron Polidori y el Sr. y la Sra. Shelley leen viejas historias e imaginan otras nuevas, todas ellas relacionadas con fantasmas. Nacido de la imaginación de los Shelley se encuentra Frankenstein, una de las historias de terror más influyentes de todos los tiempos. En una casa de una remota montaña, en lo más alto de los Alpes Franceses, un escritor se encuentra criando a la creación de los Shelley. La realidad y la percepción se unen, alimentadas por pensamientos envenenados. La humanidad crea monstruos; pero ¿quién crea a quién realmente? Este es un libro sobre la razón, la imaginación y sobre los actos relacionados con la lectura y la escritura. Una fantasmagórica novela de Marcus Sedgwick que constituye una celebración al legado de Mary Shelley. Reseñas: «Una fina y extraordinariamente bien escrita evocación sobre las fuentes más profundas del terror.» The Guardian «Una tensa y amenazadora historia de fantasmas.» The Bookseller «Ambiciosa y original.» T he Observer «El ritmo de la historia es constante y las imágenes que componen el libro ayudan a que te sientas casi tan angustiado como el propio escritor.» Alas de Sofía «Una historia diferente, original,que se adentra en el acto mismo de escribir, en la relación íntima del autor y su obra.» Anika entre libros

Set in Milwaukee during the “Dahmer summer” of 1991, A remarkable debut novel for fans of Mary Gaitskill and Gillian Flynn about two sisters—one who disappears, and one who is left to pick up the pieces in the aftermath. In the summer of 1991, a teenage girl named Dee McBride vanished in the city of Milwaukee. Nearly thirty years later, her sister, Peg, is still haunted by her sister's disappearance. Their mother, on her deathbed, is desperate to find out what happened to Dee so the family hires a psychic to help find Dee’s body and bring them some semblance of peace. The appearance of the psychic plunges Peg back to the past, to those final carefree months when she last saw Dee—the summer the Journal Sentinel called “the deadliest . . . in the history of Milwaukee.” Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer’s heinous crimes dominated the headlines and overwhelmed local law enforcement. The disappearance of one girl was easily overlooked. Peg’s hazy recollections are far from easy for her to interpret, assess, or even keep clear in her mind. And now digging deep into her memory raises doubts and difficult—even terrifying—questions. Was there anything Peg could have done to prevent Dee’s disappearance? Who was really to blame for the family's loss? How often are our memories altered by the very act of voicing them? And what does it mean to bear witness in a world where even our own stories are inherently suspect? A heartbreaking page-turner, Willa C. Richards’ debut novel is the story of a broken family looking for answers in the face of the unknown, and asks us to reconsider the power and truth of memory.

The Woods explores the lives of people in a small Vermont college town and its surrounding areas—a place at the edge of the bucolic, where the land begins to shift into something untamed. In the tradition of Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge and Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, these stories follow people who carry private griefs but search for contentment. As they try to make sense of their worlds, grappling with problems—worried about their careers, their marriages, their children, their ambitions—they also sift through the happiness they have, and often find deep solace in the landscape. What do we find in the woods? An uplifting of spirit or a quieting of sorrow. A sense of being haunted by the past. Sometimes rougher, more violent things: abandoned quarries and feral cats, black bears, brothers caught up in an escalating war, a ghost who wishes to pass on her despair, monsters who boom with hollow ecstatic laughter. But also songbirds: the hermit thrush and the winter wren. Rushing rivers glossy with froth. A nineteenth-century inn that’s somehow gotten by all these years. And far within, a vegetal twilight and constant dusk that feels outside of time. This remarkable debut illuminates the ways we all carry within ourselves aspects stark, beautiful, wild, and unknowable.

HE was a gentleman tyrant who lived for his family-even the bastard he was forced to raise. YOU could have taken on the world with her by your side yet still you were discarded-the reek of your weakness doubtless overwhelming-and witnessing the pain she had caused only seemed to strengthen her resolve. I have always looked out for that neurotic wreck so it's a crying shame that he would rather lick his wounds in a town he despises than spend summer chasing fresh foreign flesh with his brother. More for me then, I suppose. THIS is a filthy narrative, a muddled confessional, a hate crime of passion. THIS is a darkly comic, unapologetically bitter dance between the hazards of a twisted Britain and a rose-tinted Denmark built with madness in mind-a place Englishmen needn't bring any demons of their own for there are crawling things enough, and crawl they will, ever closer. THIS is the tale of an island, two cities and the monsters we became or fell for.

Fans of Sadie and You will be riveted by this compulsively readable new thriller about a survivor of dating violence who uses her newfound awareness of everyday evil to hunt for a killer. When Catherine Ellers returns home after her first semester at college, she is seeking refuge from a night she can barely piece together, dreads remembering, and refuses to talk about. She tries to get back to normal, but just days later the murder of someone close to her tears away any illusion of safety. Catherine feels driven to face both violent events head on in hopes of finding the perpetrators and bringing them to justice with the help of her childhood friend, Henry. Then a stranger from college arrives with her lost coat, missing driver's license--and details to help fill in the gaps in her memory that could be the key to solving both mysteries. But who is Andrew Worthington and why is he offering to help her? And what other dangerous obsessions is her sleepy town hiding? Surrounded by secrets and lies, Catherine must unravel the truth--before this wolf in sheep's clothing strikes again.