Everybody knows Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee”—but who was she really? In this haunting and evocative novel, Christopher Conlon (“one of the preeminent names in contemporary literary horror”— Booklist ) imagines a life for one of literature’s most renowned characters. Hers is a chronicle even more thrilling, doom-haunted, and tragic than Poe himself could have conceived, for here Annabel Lee tells her own story in her own words…for the first time.
This is a book I will be gifting friends of the genre(s) this holiday season. The pacing is near perfect. The language poetic at times. And, most impressively, in a book that is predicated on the telling of a story by the lead character, Conlon masterfully follows the golden rule of writing, by showing the reader a clever and satisfying tale.