The Glowing Hours

A mind-bending,revisionist gothic horror story about the fabled summer Mary Shelley began work on Frankensteinas told by her Indian housemaidMehrunissa ΓÇ£MehrΓÇ¥ Begum. For fans of Silvia Moreno-GarciaIsabel Ca├▒asand Kathe Koja. ΓÇ£Strange how one can find they are an interruption in another personΓÇÖs story . . .ΓÇ¥ Summer 1816: London is a hostile place for the newly disembarked Mehrunissa BegumwhoΓÇÖs come to deliver her brotherΓÇÖs letter of inheritance before returning to her comfortable life in LucknowIndia. Onlyshe canΓÇÖt find her brother anywhere and has no money for the return trip. With nowhere else to goMehr finds refuge in a boardinghouse for Indian maids. If she canΓÇÖt find her brothershe reasonsshe will get a job and start saving. Mehr is soon hired at the English estate of Mary and Percy Shelleyyoung artists of burgeoning fame who are on the run from secrets of their own. Mary is brooding and quietbut takes a curious liking to her new maidasking her to accompany the Shelleys and her stepsisterClaireΓÇöas well as the eccentric Lord Byron and his physicianJohn PolidoriΓÇöto Lake Geneva for the summer. Almost immediatelyMehr notices strangeghostly events at the villa. The walls breatheportraits shiftand phantoms appear like unbidden guests who refuse to leave. The weather is fierce and forebodingshowing no signs of softening its relentless pall. And as Mary Shelley begins work on what will become her earth-shattering literary phenomenonMehr finds herself trapped in the villa as the rest of its inhabitants descend into madness.