Elizabeth Hand – författare

Cass Neary made her name in the seventies as a photographer embedded in the burgeoning punk movement in New York City. Her pictures of the musicians and the hangers-on, the infamous, the damned, and the dead, earned her a brief moment of fame.

Thirty years later she is adrift, on her way down, and almost out when an old acquaintance sends her on a mercy gig to interview a famously reclusive photographer who lives on an island in Maine. When she arrives Down East, Cass stumbles across a decades-old mystery that is still claiming victims, and she finds one final shot at redemption.

Award-winning author Elizabeth Hand brings us a searing and iconoclastic crime novel, in which photographer Cass Neary, introduced in the underground classic Generation Loss, finds herself drawn into the shadowy world of crime in Scandinavia’s coldest corners.

As this riveting tour-de-force opens, the police already want to talk to Cass about a mysterious death she was involved with previously, but before they can bring her in, Cass accepts a job offer from overseas and hops on a plane.

In Helsinki, she authenticates a series of disturbing but stunning images taken by a famous fashion photographer who has cut himself off from the violent Nordic music scene where he first made his reputation. Paid off by her shady employer, she buys a one-way ticket to Reykjavík, in search of a lover from her own dark past.

But when the fashion photographer’s mutilated corpse is discovered back in Finland, Cass finds herself sucked into a vortex of ancient myth and betrayal, vengeance and serial murder, set against a bone-splintering soundtrack of black metal and the terrifying beauty of the sunless Icelandic wilderness. Cass Neary finds her own worst fears confirmed: it’s always darkest before it turns completely black.

THE FIRST AUTHORISED FOLLOW-UP NOVEL TO THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE

''A fitting - and frightening - homage to The Haunting of Hill House '' NEW YORK TIMES''Full of totemic menace and a heart-in-mouth, can''t-look-away frisson'' BRIDGET COLLINS''Beautifully creepy. Welcome back to Hill House'' ALIX E. HARROW''Like Hill House itself, this accomplished tribute stands alone: disturbing and unforgettable'' GUARDIAN''A Haunting on the Hill captures the essence of the original whilst offering something brand new'' CARLY REAGON

**Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and Harper''s Bazaar**

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Whatever walks there, no longer walks alone . . .

Playwright Holly Sherwin is close to her big break. Having received a grant to develop her new play, all she needs is time and space to bring her vision to life. Then on a weekend away, she stumbles upon Hill House - an ornate if crumbling gothic mansion, near-hidden outside a small town.Soon Holly''s troupe of actors - each with ghosts of their own - arrive at Hill House for a creative retreat. But before long they find themselves at odds not just with one another, but with the house itself.For something has been waiting patiently in Hill House all these years.Something no longer content to walk alone.

She is a painter. He is a poet. Their art bridges time. It is 1978. Merle is in her first year at the Corcoran School of Art, catapulted from her impoverished Appalachian upbringing into a sophisticated, dissipated art scene. It is also 1870. The teenage poet Arthur Rimbaud is on the verge of breaking through to the images and voice that will make his name. The meshed power of words and art thins the boundaries between the present and the past—and allows these two troubled, brilliant artists to enter each other’s worlds.

Radiant Days is a peerless follow-up to Elizabeth Hand’s unforgettable, multiple-starred Illyria.

In the aftermath of the mysterious death of their lead singer, the young members of a now-legendary British acid folk band hole up at Wylding Hall, an ancient English country house with its own dark secrets. There they record Wylding Hall, the album that makes their reputation—but at a terrifying cost, when Julian Blake, their new lead singer, disappears within the mansion and is never seen again.

Now, years later, each of the surviving musicians, their friends and lovers—including a psychic, a photographer, and the band''s manager—meets with a young documentary filmmaker to tell their own version of what happened during that summer. But whose story is the true one? And what really happened to Julian Blake?

Beneath the tranquil surface of a North Texas town, the future of the human race awaits …

After forty years, members of the global conspiracy known only as the Project are finally nearing the completion of their plans. FBI special agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully alone have a glimpse of the nightmare that lies ahead for the rest of the world: an alien invasion fueled by the most devastating virus in human history. And only they know that the truth isn’t out there anymore—it’s already here.

As her passionately devoted fans know, Elizabeth Hand is a uniquely gifted storyteller. Readers were introduced to her iconoclastic crime novels, featuring offbeat photographer Cass Neary, in the underground classic Generation Loss, which was followed by the brilliant Available Dark.

In Hard Light, the third book in the series, Cass makes a remarkable discovery that could change our understanding of human history—if she lives long enough to share it.

As the story opens, Cass arrives in London where she’s arranged to meet her long-lost lover, Quinn O’Boyle. When Quinn fails to show at their rendezvous point, Cass meets the eccentric couple Mallo and Morven Dunfries. When Mallo catches Cass rifling his medicine cabinet in search of drugs, he threatens to turn her in to the authorities, then puts her to work as a runner for his illegal goods.

Cass makes a delivery to Poppy Teasel, a famous singer from long ago. Cass leaves Poppy’s flat but returns a short time later to find the place ransacked and Poppy dead. Fearful she’ll become the next victim, Cass goes on the run.

"Startling, unclassifiable. . . Full of mysteries — all originating in its characters’ troubled psyches — and full of terrors that can’t be explained."—New York Times

Shirley Jackson Award winner.

Praise for Elizabeth Hand’s previous novels:

“Inhabits a world between reason and insanity—it’s a delightful waking dream.”—People

“One of the most sheerly impressive, not to mention overwhelmingly beautiful books I have read in a long time.”—Peter Straub

Cass Neary made her name in the 1970s as a photographer embedded in the burgeoning punk movement in New York City. Her pictures of the musicians and hangers on, the infamous, the damned, and the dead, got her into art galleries and a book deal. But thirty years later she is adrift, on her way down, and almost out. Then an old acquaintance sends her on a mercy gig to interview a famously reclusive photographer who lives on an island in Maine. When she arrives Downeast, Cass stumbles across a decades-old mystery that is still claiming victims, and into one final shot at redemption.

Elizabeth Hand grew up in New York State. In 1975 she moved to Washington, DC, to study playwriting at Catholic University. After seeing Patti Smith perform, Hand flunked out and became involved in the DC and New York City nascent punk scenes. From 1979 to 1986 she worked at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum; she returned to university to study cultural anthropology, and received her BA in 1985. The author of seven previous novels and the recipient of a Maine Arts Commission and an NEA Fellowship, she is a regular contributor to The Washington Post Book World. Hand lives with her family on the Maine coast.

Praise for Elizabeth Hand:

"Fiercely frightening yet hauntingly beautiful."—Tess Gerritsen, author of The Silent Girl

"A sinful pleasure."—Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love

No one is innocent, no one unexamined in award-winner Elizabeth Hand''s new collection. From the summer isles to the mysterious people next door all the way to the odd guy one cubicle over, Hand teases apart the dark strangenesses of everyday life to show us the impossibilities, broken dreams, and improbable dreams that surely can never come true.

Elizabeth Hand''s novels include Shirley Jackson Award–winner Generation Loss, Mortal Love, and Available Dark.