The Auguries

April 29, 2019
In Cottam’s dark and unsettling occult horror novel, a book that should have never been written falls into the hands of a young, callous loner girl, and present-day London and its citizens pay a horrible price. Prof. Juliet Harrington is the leading expert on the Almanac of Forbidden Wisdom, a 16th-century compendium of occult spells. When a ship mysteriously sinks in the Thames and statues around London begin bleeding from their eyes, Harrington is called on by the Home Secretary to solve the mystery. Dawn Jackson, a 14-year-old who insists she “absolutely on any kind of spectrum” despite indications to the contrary, tells her twin brother the events are called “auguries,” and she knows why they are occurring: because she’s tinkering with the almanac. Her first experiment is to reanimate her dead turtle, Freddy. Then she shoots her brother “on a whim, out of curiosity” to test the powers of the book. But after every spell, nature takes a toll on London—plagues, floods, boiling seas. Can Harrington stop it all before the city is obliterated? The story’s only flaw is the overblown treatment of Dawn’s autism, which is depicted as central to her heartlessness and violence. Cottam (The Lucifer Chord) packs plenty of nightmares into this crisply paced frightfest. Agent: Caroline Michel, PFD (U.K.).

April 1, 2019
A mythical book holds the key to terrifying events. In a London suburb, an altar boy hears troubling noises coming from a coffin, but fellow altar boy Peter Jackson hears nothing. Back home, Peter mentions the phenomenon to his clever sister, Dawn, who calls it the Auguries, a manifestation of the unrestful dead described in an ancient book they've discovered among their grandfather's possessions. The two lived with their grandfather, but when he died, Dawn refused to call the authorities. So they're living off his debit card while an unconcerned Dawn uses the information in the book. Her first experiment involves cutting off the head of their pet fish, who continues to swim around. Her next is killing Peter and raising him from the dead. Suddenly odd and alarming things start to happen. An excursion boats sinks in the Thames with no survivors. Statues all over London begin to bleed. Professor Juliet Harrington, an expert on the Almanac of Forbidden Wisdom, a lost volume thought to have been written in the 16th century, is called to a meeting with the Home Secretary, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, who ask about the Auguries, which, she explains, occur whenever someone uses the book. Juliet believes the volume was compiled in 1530 by a group of occult practitioners led by the German alchemist Gunter Keller. When the calamities continue with an outbreak of the plague and a plane crash, Juliet is commissioned to track down the book and find whomever is using it. The pressure mounts as London undergoes disaster after disaster and the fate of the world hangs in the balance. Cottam (The Lucifer Chord, 2018, etc.) is a masterly maven of the deeply disturbing occult. His latest may well leave you with nightmares.

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