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 loves her completely.

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

Mary Shelley was seventeen 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 begun the following 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 through 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.