---Praise for Mary: or, the birth of Frankenstein---

'A bold new framing for questions about where we draw lines: between queerness and heterosexuality, the natural and the unnatural, and the imaginary and the real...' New Yorker

'A touching and convincing portrait of Mary Shelley' Financial Times

'A novel that tiptoes and whispers, woos and caresses like the darkest of fairytales' Joanne Burn, author of The Hemlock Cure

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A BRAND NEW PAPERBACK EDITION OF THE BEGUILING GOTHIC NOVEL

As darkness falls and storms rage over Lake Geneva, a group of friends gather in a candle-lit-villa.

Among them are eighteen-year-old Mary and her mercurial lover Percy Shelley. As laudanum stirs their feverish imaginations, their host Lord Byron challenges everyone to write a ghost story.

Suddenly Mary is transported back to a long, strange summer in the wilds of Scotland, where she fell in love with the enigmatic Isabella Baxter.

As she remembers, something fierce and terrifying awakes within her. Now she will unleash it into the world.

"A bold new framing for questions about where we draw lines: between queerness and heterosexuality, the natural and the unnatural, and the imaginary and the real... Picks up the seeds dropped by Shelley's biographers about Isabella and allows them to bloom into an intense romantic and sexual attachment... The narrative unfolds in hypnotic language steeped in fantasy and allusion" - New Yorker

"Creative confirmation of Shelley's position as the mother of all goth girls. A moody and evocative reveal of the backstory (behind the backstory) of Frankenstein" - Kirkus

"This gothic, fantasy-tinged historical fiction delves into the teenage years of Mary Shelley to find the inspiration for Frankenstein" - The Bookseller, Category Spotlight

"She knows how to tell stories. Eekhout keeps up the tension, suggests a great deal, does not spell out much. The book is addictive" - De Volkskrant

"A convincing, profound and playful book... Mary, as a multifaceted addition to Frankenstein and the story of its origins, truly brings Mary Shelley to life" - NRC Handelsblad