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    The Devil's Scribe
    The Devil's Scribe
    The Devil's Scribe
    Ebook43 pages46 minutes

    The Devil's Scribe

    By Alma Katsu

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Fans of the Taker trilogy will love this original novella featuring the series’ immortal heroine, Lanny...and Edgar Allen Poe!

    In this short story from the author of The Hunger and the Taker trilogy, Lanore McIlvrae returns to America for the first time in twenty years—after decades of running from her past—to confront the source of her fear. The year is 1846 and Lanore—Lanny—has just landed in Baltimore after a long transatlantic crossing. That very night, she meets an “unattractive man with a high forehead and sunken eyes, and a tiny, pinched mouth like a parrot’s beak” who claims to write stories so dark and unsettling that he could be the Devil’s Scribe. His name? Edgar Allan Poe. Has Lanny finally met her match in this macabre man…or is it the other way around?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPocket Star
    Release dateMar 13, 2012
    ISBN9781451687965
    The Devil's Scribe
    Author

    Alma Katsu

    Alma Katsu was born in Alaska and raised near Concord, Massachusetts. She has a BA in writing from Brandeis University and an MA from the Johns Hopkins Writing Program. She is the author of The Taker Trilogy (The Taker, The Reckoning, and The Descent) as well as The Hunger and The Deep. The Hunger was a finalist for the Bram Stoker and Locus magazine award and was selected as one of NPR’s 100 favorite horror stories. She lives with her husband in Virginia. Visit her on Twitter @AlmaKatsu.

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    • 5/5
      Loved this short story, and "visiting" with one of my favorite early American gothic writers.

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    The Devil's Scribe - Alma Katsu

    9781451687965.jpg

    THE

    DEVIL’S

    SCRIBE

    A Novella

    ornament.jpg

    Alma Katsu

    Author of THE TAKER TRILOGY

    PocketStarLogo.jpg

    Pocket Star Books

    New York London Toronto Sydney New Delhi

    Pocket Star Books

    A Divisin of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

    1230 Avenue of the Americas

    New York, NY 10020

    This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

    Copyright © 2012 by Alma Katsu

    All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

    First Pocket Star Books eBook edition March 2012

    POCKET STAR BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

    The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

    Designed by Nancy Singer

    ISBN 978-1-4516-8796-5 (eBook)

    CONTENTS

    The Devil’s Scribe

    Exclusive Excerpt from THE TAKER

    THE DEVIL’S SCRIBE

    ornament.jpg

    1846

    The evening of my return to America was ominous and an indication, I feared, of things to come. We sailed into Baltimore harbor under a weirdly yellow night sky not unlike the celestial phosphorescence of the northern lights. It was as though an unknown hand had blanketed the city in a haze of brimstone for my arrival, a sign that something sinister would take place that night. You may find those words melodramatic or think them the ramblings of a paranoid mind, but I’d come to believe I was cursed, and deserved nothing less.

    I regretted returning to America this way—gracelessly, hastily—having fled more than twenty years earlier after inflicting a grievous hurt on a man. Any stranger would have said I scarcely looked twenty years of age, and might have asked how a girl my size could possibly have harmed a full-grown man, to which I had no reply. I’d learned long ago to tell no one anything, and keep my strange story to myself.

    I thought I’d never return to Boston, so great was my shame. I’d been fleeing my past, trying to outrun the terrible thing I’d done all those years ago. I was learning, however, that one never really escapes from one’s sins; they will demand your attention if you try to ignore them. I had suffered many sleepless evenings and had nightmares on the rare occasion when I managed to sleep. At last I could take it no more, and booked passage back to Boston to attend to a dark duty that was long overdue.

    TXB%20ORN.jpg

    Baltimore was a popular port in those days, particularly for ships coming from Europe. Travelers could take a train in either direction on the eastern seaboard, either up to New York or Boston, or south to the fine old houses of Charleston. Boston, a city where I’d once lived, was my final destination, but the train did not leave until

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