Frankenstein's Monster »

SUSAN HEYBOER O’KEEFE is the author of the novel Death by Eggplant, a Disney Adventures Kids’ Choice nominee; the bestselling picture book One Hungry Monster; and the newest addition Hungry Monster ABC. Frankenstein’s Monster is her adult debut.

“Behind me, stiffened with frost, lie the remains of Victor Frankenstein.”
 
What becomes of a monster without its maker? At the end of Mary Shelley’s classic novel, the creator dies but his creation still lives, cursed to a life of isolation and hatred. 

Frankenstein’s Monster continues the creature’s story as he’s compelled to discover his humanity, to escape the ship captain who vowed to the dying Frankenstein to hunt him down—and to resist the woman who would destroy them all.

This is a tale of passion, revenge, violence, and madness—and the desperate search for meaning in an often meaningless world.

Publishers Weekly

The eponymous monster of gothic horror rises once again in this well-wrought sequel to Mary Shelley’s classic tale, the adult debut of children’s author O’Keefe (One Hungry Monster with Lynn Munsinger). Narrated by the articulate and sensitive monster, the novel picks up immediately after the end of Shelley’s original, with explorer Robert Walton deciding to avenge the death of his “friend” Victor by relentlessly pursuing Frankenstein’s creation to its death. In retaliation, the monster treks to England to destroy Walton’s family only to befriend and fall in love with Walton’s capricious niece, Lily Winterbourne. Run-ins with misunderstanding humans and the monomaniacal Walton as the couple attempt to flee to the desolate Orkney Islands give the monster ample opportunities to reflect on the inherent cruelty of humans, the nature of compassion, and mysteries of life and death. O’Keefe credibly extrapolates the moods and thoughts of the monster from how Shelley first imagined them in one of the better recent treatments of the Frankenstein theme. (Oct.)