Love, Sex & Frankenstein

Perfect for fans of The Essex Serpent and The Manningtree Witches.

‘Hauntingly beautiful, dangerous and magnificent’ Anya Bergman, author of The Witches of Vardo‘A deliciously dark reimagining of the birth of literature's greatest monster’ Emma Stonex, author of The Lamplighters‘Richly woven, gorgeously addictive, this is a true Gothic novel about life, death, desire, fury and passion’ Joanne Burn, author of The Bone Hunters--Villa Diodati, Lake Geneva, 1816. The dark summer that birthed a monster . . . Eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley has fled London with her lover, Percy Shelley, and her sister, Claire. Tormented by Shelley’s betrayals, haunted by the loss of their baby and suspicious of her sister’s intentions, Mary seeks sanctuary. But Lord Byron’s villa, lying under ominous, ash-shrouded skies, feels more like a trap.

When Byron suggests each guest write a supernatural tale, Mary is as drawn to the challenge as she is, unexpectedly, to Byron himself. And so an idea begins to form in her mind . . . It spills out of her in thick, black ink. A thing given life is before her.

Day and night, she is possessed. Heart and mind. Body and soul. But is she in control, or is it?In this hauntingly evocative feminist retelling, Caroline Lea delves into the female rage, creative madness and steamy scandal that bore the world's most famous work of gothic fiction.