The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein

To be weak is miserable
 
 
 
Lightning clawed across the sky, tracing veins through the clouds and marking the pulse of the universe itself.
 
I sighed happily as rain slashed the carriage windows and thunder rumbled so loudly we could not even hear the wheels bump when the dirt lane met the cobblestones at the edge of Ingolstadt.
 
Justine trembled beside me like a newborn rabbit, burying her face in my shoulder. Another bolt lit our carriage with bright white clarity before rendering us temporarily deaf with a clap of thunder so loud the windows threatened to loosen.
 
How can you laugh? Justine asked. I had not realized I was laughing until that moment.
 
I stroked her dark hair where strands dangled free from her hat. Justine hated loud noises of any type: Slamming doors. Storms. Shouting. Especially shouting. But I had made certain she had endured none of that in the past two years. It was so odd that our separate origins--similar in cruelty, though differing in duration--had had such opposite outcomes. Justine was the most open and loving and genuinely good person I had ever known.
 
And I was--
 
Well. Not like her.
 
Did I ever tell you Victor and I used to climb out onto the roof of the house to watch lightning storms?
 
She shook her head, not lifting it.
 
The way the lighting would play off the mountains, throwing them into sharp relief, as though we were watching the creation of the world itself. Or over the lake, so it looked like it was in both the sky and the water. We would be soaked by the end; it is a wonder neither of us caught our death. I laughed again, remembering. My skin--fair like my hair--would turn the most violent shades of red from the cold. Victor, with his dark curls plastered to his sallow forehead, accentuating the shadows he always bore beneath his eyes, would look like death. What a pair we were!
 
One night, I

KIERSTEN WHITE is the New York Times bestselling author of the And I Darken series, comprised of And I Darken, Now I Rise, and Bright We Burn; the Paranormalcy series; Slayer, and many more novels. She lives with her family near the ocean in San Diego, which, in spite of its perfection, spurs her to dream of faraway places and even further-away times.

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If you read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and thought the ladies in that were getting a bad deal, then this is the book you've been waiting for .White is unafraid to dig in the graveyard and piece together a creature of her own design out of old parts, and the resulting tale is dark and chilling. NPR

"Exquisitely disturbing. The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein is a beautiful tapestry of horror, sewn together with threads of madness, obsession, and murder. Kiersten White has written a masterful and monstrous retelling." STEPHANIE GARBER, #1 New York Times and internationally bestselling author of Caraval and Legendary

"Visceral, sinister, and inescapably compelling, The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein feels at once reverent of its inspiration, and entirely new. White's skill is scalpel-sharp." VICTORIA SCHWAB, #1 New York Times bestselling author of This Savage Song

"In the hands of master storyteller Kiersten White, the bones of a familiar story are reconstructed to form an inventive, grotesque, and completely unexpected reimagining of Frankenstein. Mary Shelley would be proud." MACKENZI LEE, New York Times bestselling author of The Gentlemen's Guide to Vice and Virtue

Kiersten White has breathed fresh life into a much-loved classic. Even Mary Shelley herself would be riveted by the dark lengths Elizabeth Lavenza would go to in order to survive. A dark and lovely midnight read. MEGAN SHEPHERD, New York Times bestselling author of The Madman's Daughter trilogy 

 "Breathtaking." PW, starred review