Mary: or, the Birth of Frankenstein

New in paperback: gothic, fantasy-tinged historical fiction, delving back into the teenage years of Mary Shelley to find the inspiration for Frankenstein. As darkness falls and storms rage over Lake Geneva, a group of friends gather in a candle-lit villa. Among them is eighteen-year-old Mary, who has run away with her mercurial lover Percy Shelley. As laudanum stirs their feverish imaginations, their host Lord Byron challenges everyone to write a ghost story. Suddenly Mary is transported back to a long, strange summer in the wilds of Scotland, where she fell in love with the enigmatic Isabella Baxter, learned tales of mythical beasts - and discovered that some monsters are real. Something fierce and terrifying has awoken in her. Now she will unleash it into the world.