The Bone Key

The dead and the monstrous will not leave Kyle Murchison Booth alone, for an unwilling foray into necromancy has made him sensitive to—and attractive to —the creatures who roam the darkness of his once-safe world. Ghosts, ghouls, incubi: all have one thing in common. They know Booth for one of their own. These ten stories draw Booth from the safety of his work as a museum archivist into the darkness both of the supernatural and of the human pysche, where he will find answers to mysteries unsolved for decades and learn truths about himself he would rather never have known . . .

From Publishers Weekly

Writing in the tradition of M.R. James and Algernon Blackwood, Monette reconstructs the traditional English ghost story—insinuated horror, no gratuitous sex or violence—with a decidedly modern-day approach in this laudable collection of 10 necromantic mystery stories featuring introverted museum archivist Kyle Murchison Booth. Noteworthy selections include Elegy for a Demon Lover, which chronicles Booth's entanglement with a seductive otherworldly entity who teaches him about pleasure and pain and the shadowed places in-between. In the brilliantly Lovecraftian Bringing Helena Back, Booth agrees to help an old college friend bring his wife back from the dead, with horrifying results. Booth also investigates the skeleton of a woman sealed within the basement walls of the museum where he works, a house haunted by the spirit of a young girl and the ghost of a murdered private school student. Cerebral, ethereal and stylishly understated, this entrancing collection will appeal to fans of literary horror, dark fantasy and supernatural mystery. (Jan.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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