Excellent news for fans of Tim Powers. His
new novel, Hide Me Among the Graves
is published by Corvus in September (£14.99). And if you’ve not yet read Powers’
The Stress of Her Regard you are in
for a double treat (also out in September from Corvus £8.99).
Hide
Me Among the Graves: “London, winter of 1862,
Adelaide McKee, a former prostitute, arrives on the doorstep of veterinarian
John Crawford, a man she met once seven years earlier. Their brief meeting
produced a child who, until now, had been presumed dead. McKee has learned that
the girl lives – but that her life and soul are in mortal peril from a vampiric
ghost. But this is no ordinary spirit; the bloodthirsty wraith is none other
than John Polidori, the onetime physician to the mad, bad, and dangerous
Romantic poet Lord Byron. Both McKee and Crawford have mysterious histories
with creatures like Polidori, and their child is a prize the malevolent spirit
covets dearly.
Polidori is also the late uncle and
supernatural muse to the poet Christina Rossetti and her brother, the painter
Dante Gabriel Rossetti. When she was just fourteen years old, Christina
unwittingly brought Polidori's curse upon her family. But the curse bestowed
unexpected blessings as well, inspiring Christina's poetry and Gabriel's
paintings. But when Polidori resurrects Dante's dead wife – turning her into a
horrifying vampire – and threatens other family members, Christina and Dante
agree that they must destroy their monstrous uncle and break the spell, even if
it means the end of their creative powers.
Sweeping from the mansions of London's high
society to its grimy slums, the elegant salons of the West End to the pre-Roman
catacombs beneath St. Paul's Cathedral, Hide Me Among the Graves blends
the historical and the supernatural in a dazzling, edge-of-your-seat thrill
ride – a modern horror story with a Victorian twist.”
The
Stress of Her Regard: “The secret history of the
Romantic poets – Lake Geneva, 1816: As Byron and Shelley row on the peaceful
waters of Lake Geneva, a sudden squall threatens to capsize them. But this is
no natural event - something has risen from the lake itself to attack them.
Kent, 1816: Michael Crawford's wife is
brutally murdered on their wedding night as he sleeps peacefully beside her -
and a vengeful ghost claims Crawford as her own husband. Crawford's quest to
escape his supernatural wife will force him to travel the Continent in the
company of the most creative, most doomed poets of his age. Byron, Keats and
Shelley all have a part to play in his fate, and the fate of Europe.”
