Federico Andahazi
The Merciful Women
Pbk published May 2001 by Black Swan at £6.99
ISBN: 0552999210
Switzerland, 1816. Lord Byron, Shelley, Shelley's wife Mary, and Byron's physician Dr Polidori gather at Villa Diodati. Polidori is their intellectual inferior, a mere hanger-on, but he is on a quest to outwit them all. Through a Faustian pact with Annette Legrand, the mysterious third member of the notorious vaudeville act, the Legrand sisters, he has obtained the most frightening vampire story ever written, which he will read out on the very night Mary Shelley first performs her tale of Frankenstein. But, in exchange, what must Polidori offer this ghostly female predator! What of the sisters' thirst for human male fluids?
The Merciful Women is a subversive Gothic literary game which sets the traditional horror story on its head. Opium and erotica provide the background for this ironic novel of grand themes, sex and literature.
The Anatomist:
'A fascinating book gripping, a pleasure to read, and a very fine novel.'
Iain Pears, author of An Instance of the Fingerpost
'The Anatomist should do for the clitoris what Longitude did for the chronometer,'
Francis Gilbert, The Times
Federico Andahazi lives in Buenos Aires. His first novel, The Anatomist, became a bestseller after it was awarded the Fortabat Prize under controversial circumstances in its native Argentina. The Merciful Women is his second novel.
Jody Shields
The Fig Eater
Pbk published June 2001 by Black Swan at £6.99
ISBN: 0552998656A mesmerizing novel of suspense and latent eroticism set against the backdrop of Freud's Vienna
On a warm August night the body of a young girl is discovered in Vienna's celebrated Volksgarten. She has been strangled. Using the latest forensic methods, the Chief Inspector of Police begins his painstaking search for the killer. He is not alone, however. His wife Erszbbet - a woman steeped in the Gypsy lore of her native Hungary - becomes obsessed with the dead girl. In secret, she conducts her own investigation of the murder, guided by intuition, instinct and superstition.
'Authentically eerie and erotic - a Viennese dance of
death.' Victoria Glendinng
'Suspenseful, atmospheric and highly intelligent; focuses
a brilliant light on the murky world of Imperial Vienna.'
D. M. Thomas
'Topographical and historical details accumulate to
create an intensely powerful sense of time and place in
this atmospheric and accomplished period whodunit.'
Harper and Queen
A resident of New York, Jody Shields is the former
Design Editor of the New York Times magazine and a
former contributing editor of American Vogue and House
and Garden. The author of two non-fiction books on
fashion, she has also written several screenplays and is a
collected artist. The Fig Eater is her first novel.