Angelica

In Victorian London, Constance, a lowly clerk, marries Joseph Barton, a biological researcher, and believes she has found her ultimate husband and protector. But after three miscarriages and the troubled birth of their daughter, Angelica, things begin to change. Constance begins to fear her husband's intentions, his potentially murderous hatred of her, and his efforts to alienate her from their child. Sensing the presence of supernatural evil in the house, she calls upon a spiritualist to save them all. "Angelica" weaves a tapestry of parallel and sometimes conflicting interpretations of the lives of Constance, Ann Montague - the spiritualist in whom Constance places her deepest trust - Joseph, and Angelica herself. Nothing here is as it seems...

'A spectacular, ever-proliferating tale of mingled motives, psychological menace, and delicately told crises of appetite and loneliness' - The New Yorker. 'Phillips's spellbinding third book cements this young novelist's reputation as one of the best writers in America, a storyteller who combines Nabokovian wit and subtlety with a narrative urgency that rivals Stephen King's' - Washington Post. 'Phillips is prodigiously gifted' - Guardian. 'Phillips blends wit, erudition and eccentricity' --The Times