Wakening the Crow

Oliver Gooch comes across a tooth in a velvet box, with a note from 1888 saying it belonged to a young Edgar Allan Poe. When he converts an old church to a bookshop selling strange and occult titles, he displays the tooth there, calling the store Poe's Tooth Books.But the bookstore has been bought with blood money: Oliver and his wife Rosie received a large cash settlement when their young daughter Chloe was left brain-damaged after a hit-and-run accident. Rosie hopes the child will soon return to normal, but Oliver is secretly relieved by his daughter's condition, dreading that if she recovers she'll reveal a terrible truth about him. Then one freezing night a raggedy, skeletal crow comes into the shop and refuses to leave. The bird infiltrates their lives, altering Oliver and Rosie's relationship and affecting Chloe in strange ways. It becomes a dangerous presence in the firelit, shadowy old church. Inexorably, the family, the tooth, the crow, and their story will draw to a terrifying climax.Wakening the Crow is an unsettling novel of creeping menace by a modern-day master of psychological horror, Stephen Gregory, award-winning author of the contemporary classic The Cormorant.

About the Author

Stephen Gregory is a former Hollywood screenwriter who has worked with director William Freidkin, among others. A Welsh writer, he was born in Derby, England and gained a law degree from the University of London. As a teacher he travelled the world for work, moving from Bangor in Wales to Algiers and the Sudan. His novel The Cormorant was made into a BBC film starring Ralph Fiennes. This is his second novel for Solaris.

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