Secret Books of Paradys Books

Three novellas linked by their setting in the strange magical city of Paradys, in a timeless France, evoke an alternate world of dark fantasy, bizarre imagination, and decadent atmosphere

Traces, through diverse, horrifying encounters through the centuries, the trail of It, the beast created on the Fifth Day, which preys on the unwitting

The ambience of fin de siecle France imbues these eight gothic tales in the third volume in Lee's Secret Books of Paradys tetralogy, tracing the tortured lives once led by those buried in the crypts and cemeteries of the mythical (or forgotten) city of Paradys. "The Weasel Bride" twists a folktale about a man who marries an enchanted weasel and dies of her bite into an account of a young husband who kills his beloved bride on their wedding night and takes her dreadful secret to the gallows. The artist in "The Glass Dagger," who normally saves her emotion for her art, is consumed by jealous rage and turns to supernatural revenge when a jaded aristocrat tries an old stratagem to win her love. In "The Moon Is a Mask" a drudge who creates a world of beauty in her garret room steals to buy a mask that turns her into a vampire owl. The miasma of corruption and death, combined with vivid and at times elegiac writing will engross readers who fancy this dark shade of fantasy writing.

In this concluding volume, a seductive nightmare unfolds in three parallel versions of the city that are connected by a labyrinth of ice whose dangers are amplified by the will and emotion of its lunatic travelers