Dreadful Skin »

I ducked into a niche between a cabin and the pilot house and hiked my skirt up enough to reach down into my garter holster. I've heard it said that God made all men, but Samuel Colt made all men equal. We'd see what Mr. Colt could do for a woman.

Jack Gabert went to India to serve his Queen. He returned to London a violently changed man, infected with an unnatural sickness that altered his body and warped his mind. Eileen Callaghan left an Irish convent with a revolver and a secret. She knows everything and nothing about Jack's curse, but she cannot rest until he's caught. His soul cannot be saved. It can only be returned to God. In the years following the American Civil War, the nun and unnatural creature stalk one another across the United States. Their dangerous game of cat and mouse leads them along great rivers, across dusty plains, and into the no man's land of the unmarked western territories. Here are three tales of the hunt. Reader, take this volume and follow these tormented souls. Learn what you can from their struggle's against each other, against God, and against themselves.

Publishers Weekly

A runaway Irish nun pursues a murderous werewolf across post-Civil War America in this riveting Southern gothic from Priest (Wings to the Kingdom). Divided into three atmospheric, slightly disjointed sections, the story opens aboard a riverboat carrying John Gabert, the werewolf, and Sister Eileen Callaghan, who's pursuing him with a Colt revolver hidden under her skirts. Gabert escapes, but Eileen is infected by the lycanthrope's blood. Nine years later, she picks up the scent, investigating a traveling Pentecostal revivalist show that leaves a trail of chewed corpses in its wake. Eileen struggles to control her own bloody urges, while fighting to protect innocents before she confronts Gabert again, two years later. Though the jumps in time make the plot feel forced, the haunting characters will keep readers turning the pages. When one must become a monster in order to kill a monster, can the hunt still be justified? This book raise tantalizing philosophical questions about good and evil as well as the roles of hunter and prey. (Feb.)