Quiver
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Now in paperback, Holly Luhning’s masterful debut thriller—featuring the original female Dracula and her modern-day underground cult.
Soon after her arrival in London, Danica, a forensic psychologist who works at a former insane asylum, receives a mysterious note from Maria, a seductive archivist with whom Danica has had an intriguing and complicated past. Maria claims she has Countess Elizabeth Báthory’s diaries that chronicle her relentless torture of young women.
As Maria increasingly insinuates herself into Danica’s life, soon Danica is in too deep to notice that Maria’s motivations are far from selfless; in fact, they may just cost Danica her life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The malignant spirit of 16th-century sociopath Countess Elizabeth B thory hovers over events in Canadian author Luhning's suspenseful first novel, a modern tale of obsession and seduction. Since her youth, forensic psychiatrist Danica Winston has been fascinated by the Hungarian countess and her legendary slaughters of servant girls so she could bathe in their blood. Working in London with a patient who's just killed a teenage girl in the manner of B thory, Danica makes the acquaintance of Maria J nos, an enigmatic archivist who claims to have found B thory's long-lost diaries. Drawn into Maria's glamorous life, Danica succumbs to her new friend's Svengalian manipulations in a way that increasingly parallels the hold B thory exerts on accomplices in the grisly diary entries Maria tantalizes Danica with. Despite the over-the-top climax, the care with which Luhning (Sway, a poetry collection) orchestrates the tale's events makes Danica's discovery of the dark side of herself and others both believable and chilling.