by Kendare Blake
Coming September 2011
from Tor
ISBN-13: 9780765328
Just your average boy-meets-girl, girl-kills-people story. . .
Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.
So did his father before him, until his gruesome murder by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father's mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. Together they follow legends and local lore, trying to keep up with the murderous dead—keeping pesky things like the future and friends at bay.
When they arrive in a new town in search of a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas doesn't expect anything outside of the ordinary: move, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he's never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, but now stained red and dripping blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.
And she, for whatever reason, spares his life.
I am so unbelievably excited for this book. Thanks to Goodreads.com I caught onto it early, a little too early may be, and I have been dying for the cover reveal and a release date. This is hands down the book I have been anticipating the most for 2011- from a debut author that is. There is something about a vengeful and murderous spirit in a bloody gown (like a twisted, and dead, version of Miss Havisham from Great Expectations should have been!) having a love affair with the one person who is capable of slaying her... that is like a book I made to order in my wildest dreams. Thank the Nerdly Gods for Kendare Blake (no pressure or anything to live up to my completely irrational expectations.)
