Gothic, fantasy-tinged historical fiction, delving back into the teenage years of Mary Shelley tofind the inspiration for Frankenstein

'A fantastically moody, unsettling novel, with a teasing, enigmatic atmosphere entirely its own' SARAH WATERS
'Intensely lyrical and powerfully haunting... Sublime storytelling and Gothic fiction at its very best!' SUSAN STOKES-CHAPMAN
'A novel about wild, dissident passion, the profound dislocations of grief, and the intoxication of composition' NAOMI BOOTH
'A little masterpiece of suspense-filled gothic fiction... Persuasive and mysterious' FINANCIAL TIMES
'A beautiful, hallucinatory dream of a novel' J.M. MIRO

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There is a beast inside her, a monster. It wants to scream, it wants to tear things apart.

1816. Mary, eighteen years old, is staying in a villa on Lake Geneva with her lover Percy Shelley. She is tormented by his infidelities; haunted by the loss of her baby daughter.

Then one evening with friends, as storms rage outside and laudanum stirs their imaginations, Lord Byron challenges everyone to write a ghost story, and something fierce and wild awakens in Mary.

Memories surface of the long, strange summer she once spent with a family in Scotland, where she found herself falling in love with the enigmatic Isabella Baxter. She learned tales of mythical beasts, witches and spirits. And she encountered real monsters - both in the rocky wilds, and far, far closer to home...

Illuminating the past like a flash of lightning, this brilliant reimagining of the birth of Frankenstein takes us into a feverish world of waking dreams-where grief mingles with desire, and the veil between beauty and horror grows thin.

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PRAISE FOR MARY

' A bold new framing' NEW YORKER
' Like reading a laudanum dream' ANNIE GARTHWAITE
' Rich, intricate and beguiling, this is a novel of enormous insight, great heart and incredible skill' NELL STEVENS
' A novel that tiptoes and whispers, woos and caresses like the darkest of fairytales' JOANNE BURN, author of The Hemlock Cure
' Intensely sensual and brooding' ESSIE FOX, author of The Fascination
' Lush, atmospheric, and deliciously Gothic; Eekhout brings Mary Shelley's childhood and her conception of Frankenstein to life as surely as any mad scientist ' C.E. MCGILL, author of Our Hideous Progeny
' A literary creation story as bold, terrifying, and riveting as Frankenstein itself' LAURIE LICO ALBANESE
' A lyrical dream of a book that strays into the nightmarish, the gothic and the eerie with an assured elegance' ELIZABETH LEE, author of Cunning Women
' This gothic, fantasy-tinged historical fiction delves into the teenage years of Mary Shelley to find the inspiration for Frankenstein' THE BOOKSELLER, Category Spotlight
' Reveals the rich inner life of one of the world's greatest creative imaginations' SARA SHERIDAN
' Creative confirmation of Shelley's position as the mother of all goth girls. A moody and evocative reveal of the backstory (behind the backstory) of Frankenstein' KIRKUS
' Suitably gothic and atmospheric in tale and tone' MARIE CLAIRE
' A must-read' i
' A nuanced, beautifully atmospheric portrayal of a young woman's intense inner life, foreshadowing Frankenstein's themes of grief, loneliness, and the desire for love' BOOKLIST