Everina

A new Gothic horror novella set in present-day Chicago about a social worker who, having lost her partner and her own child, finds a child the world was never supposed to see, and yet, she loves her completely.

When Carmen discovers a young girl in Palos Woods, she finds herself quickly drawn in by the mystery surrounding the child. Who raised this bright, healthy, and apparently nonverbal child? Who carefully and lovingly stitched the name tag reading “Everina” onto her dress? And why is Everina so healthy, despite an impossibly cold body temperature and an inability to tolerate most human food? As a veteran social worker, Carmen knows that the system is ill-equipped to handle mysteries, and that she has a limited amount of time to find Everina a safe home in a loving family. Because Everina is a mystery, and one that Carmen might just be willing to bet her life on solving…

Mary Shelley was twenty when her baby died, and one night she dreamed of that dead child coming to life in her embrace as they sat next to a fire. Frankenstein was written that same year. Yet, for over two hundred years, adaptations have interrogated the man who abandoned his creation, and none of those stories have looked at Shelley’s work from the lens of a mother who just wanted her child to live. This book is an exciting new take on one of our most enduring classics.