Of Monsters and Madness
2 primary works
Book 1
Summoned to her father's Philadelphia house in 1826 after her mother's death, seventeen year-old Annabel Lee's whole life is about to change. Here, she can't wear pants and practice medicine like she used to in Siam. The new city she's supposed to call home is full of dark secrets and strange curiosities—a world she has trouble navigating.
Until she meets her father's assistants.
There is Allan—darkly handsome and gentle natured, he dabbles in writing stories when he's not helping with medical advancements in her father's laboratory, and Edgar—who bears an uncanny resemblance to Allan, but is everything Allan is not. Cruel, selfish, and determined to see his own gruesome fantasies brought to life.
When her brilliant, but reckless, father's scientific experiments rapidly morph into morbid obsession, a terrible truth is revealed: Edgar and Allan are two halves of the same person, and Annabel quickly finds that her own attempts to cure Allan of his "affliction" are becoming as morally questionable as her father's.
But nothing can prepare her for the lengths she'll have to go to when her father is kidnapped by the dangerous and mysterious Dorian Gray in his relentless pursuit for the ultimate scientific breakthrough—eternal life. To hunt for a monster, Annabel will need a monster, and she is forced to unite with Edgar to save her father—the man responsible for creating them both.
Note: This edition contains book two, Of Phantoms and Fury. It starts at chapter 26.
Book 2
Note: This book was cancelled, and it is now included in newer editions of book one.
The sequel to Of Monsters and Madness from a New York Times best-selling author. Edgar Allan Poe and Annabel Lee return for more Gothic thrills in this mashup drawing on Frankenstein and The Picture of Dorian Gray.
"Madness most magnificent!" --The El Paso Times on Of Monsters and Madness
In mourning after the sudden death of her grandfather, Annabel Lee is devastated when her beau, Allan Poe, commits himself to an insane asylum to keep his second personality--callous serial killer Edgar--at bay. In need of distraction, she eagerly accepts her father's invitation to help with his medical experiments. But his scientific study is rapidly morphing into morbid obsession. And Annabel's own attempts to cure Allan are becoming morally questionable.
When Annabel begins receiving mysterious notes and then her father is kidnapped, she's left with little choice. She needs Edgar's help.
The pair tracks the letters back to the dashing and quite dangerous Dorian Gray, who seems to know all about Annabel's past. The secrets he reveals force her to make a decision that may make her the most monstrous of all.
This follow-up to Of Monsters and Madness deftly combines horror themes drawn from Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to create a chilling Gothic thriller for a new era.