The Devil's Scribe
By Alma Katsu
4/5
()
About this ebook
In this short story from the author of The Hunger and the Taker trilogy, Lanore McIlvrae returns to America for the first time in twenty years—after decades of running from her past—to confront the source of her fear. The year is 1846 and Lanore—Lanny—has just landed in Baltimore after a long transatlantic crossing. That very night, she meets an “unattractive man with a high forehead and sunken eyes, and a tiny, pinched mouth like a parrot’s beak” who claims to write stories so dark and unsettling that he could be the Devil’s Scribe. His name? Edgar Allan Poe. Has Lanny finally met her match in this macabre man…or is it the other way around?
Alma Katsu
Alma Katsu is the award-winning author of six novels, most recently Red Widow, The Deep, and The Hunger. She is a graduate of the master’s writing program at the Johns Hopkins University and received her bachelor’s degree from Brandeis University. Prior to the publication of her first novel, Katsu had a long career as a senior intelligence analyst for several US agencies. She lives in West Virginia with her husband.
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5 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Loved this short story, and "visiting" with one of my favorite early American gothic writers.
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Book preview
The Devil's Scribe - Alma Katsu
THE
DEVIL’S
SCRIBE
A Novella
ornament.jpgAlma Katsu
Author of THE TAKER TRILOGY
PocketStarLogo.jpgPocket Star Books
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Pocket Star Books
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Alma Katsu
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Pocket Star Books eBook edition March 2012
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Designed by Nancy Singer
ISBN 978-1-4516-8796-5 (eBook)
CONTENTS
The Devil’s Scribe
Exclusive Excerpt from THE TAKER
THE DEVIL’S SCRIBE
ornament.jpg1846
The evening of my return to America was ominous and an indication, I feared, of things to come. We sailed into Baltimore harbor under a weirdly yellow night sky not unlike the celestial phosphorescence of the northern lights. It was as though an unknown hand had blanketed the city in a haze of brimstone for my arrival, a sign that something sinister would take place that night. You may find those words melodramatic or think them the ramblings of a paranoid mind, but I’d come to believe I was cursed, and deserved nothing less.
I regretted returning to America this way—gracelessly, hastily—having fled more than twenty years earlier after inflicting a grievous hurt on a man. Any stranger would have said I scarcely looked twenty years of age, and might have asked how a girl my size could possibly have harmed a full-grown man, to which I had no reply. I’d learned long ago to tell no one anything, and keep my strange story to myself.
I thought I’d never return to Boston, so great was my shame. I’d been fleeing my past, trying to outrun the terrible thing I’d done all those years ago. I was learning, however, that one never really escapes from one’s sins; they will demand your attention if you try to ignore them. I had suffered many sleepless evenings and had nightmares on the rare occasion when I managed to sleep. At last I could take it no more, and booked passage back to Boston to attend to a dark duty that was long overdue.
TXB%20ORN.jpgBaltimore was a popular port in those days, particularly for ships coming from Europe. Travelers could take a train in either direction on the eastern seaboard, either up to New York or Boston, or south to the fine old houses of Charleston. Boston, a city where I’d once lived, was my final destination, but the train did not leave until