Description:
Named a BEST BOOK OF 2021 by the New York Times, NPR, the New York Public Library, Audible, Tor.com, Book Riot, Library Journal, and Kirkus!
Longlisted for the 2022 PEN Open Book Award
"Riveting...[A] tender, ferocious book."--New York Times
"Beautifully fantastical."--NPR
"Masterful."--Chicago Tribune
One October morning, Laina gets the news that her brother has been shot and killed by Boston cops. But what looks like a case of police brutality soon reveals something much stranger. Monsters are real. And they want everyone to know it.
As creatures from myth and legend come out of the shadows, seeking safety through visibility, their emergence sets off a chain of seemingly unrelated events. Members of a local werewolf pack are threatened into silence. A professor follows a missing friend's trail of bread crumbs to a mysterious secret society. And a young boy with unique abilities seeks refuge in a pro-monster organization with secrets of its own. Meanwhile, more people start disappearing, suicides and hate crimes increase, and protests erupt globally, both for and against the monsters.
At the center is a mystery no one thinks to ask: Why now? What has frightened the monsters out of the dark?
The world will soon find out.
Brief description:
Cadwell Turnbull is the award-winning author of The Lesson and the Convergence Saga. His short fiction has appeared in The Verge, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Asimov's Science Fiction, and several anthologies, including The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018 and Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror. He has won both the Neukom Institute Literary Award and a Lambda Award, and been shortlisted for the VCU Cabell Award and the Shirley Jackson Award.
Review Quotes:
"Turnbull's sophomore work puts him at the top of the field of fantasy literary fiction."
-- "Library Journal (starred review)"