In the bestselling tradition of The Night Circus and Sarah Waters’s The Little Stranger, Adam McOmber’s hauntingly original debut novel follows a young woman in Victorian England whose peculiar abilities help her infiltrate a mysterious secret society. In this hauntingly original debut novel about a young woman whose peculiar abilities help her infiltrate a mysterious secret society, Adam McOmber uses fantastical twists and dark turns to create a fast-paced, unforgettable story. Young Jane Silverlake lives with her father in a crumbling family estate on the edge of Hampstead Heath. Jane has a secret—an unexplainable gift that allows her to see the souls of man-made objects—and this talent isolates her from the outside world. Her greatest joy is wandering the wild heath with her neighbors, Madeline and Nathan. But as the friends come of age, their idyll is shattered by the feelings both girls develop for Nathan, and by Nathan’s interest in a cult led by Ariston Day, a charismatic mystic popular with London’s elite. Day encourages his followers to explore dream manipulation with the goal of discovering a strange hidden world, a place he calls the Empyrean. A year later, Nathan has vanished, and the famed Inspector Vidocq arrives in London to untangle the events that led up to Nathan’s disappearance. As a sinister truth emerges, Jane realizes she must discover the origins of her talent, and use it to find Nathan herself, before it’s too late.

The White Forest: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

McOmber, Adam

United States

GALLERY BOOKS

“A moody, gothic tale full of hypnotizing twists and turns that transports readers to a world that is part real, part fantasy and definitely plays with the mind” (Chicago Sun-Times). Jane Silverlake lives with her father in a crumbling family estate on the edge of Hampstead Heath. Jane has a secret—an unexplainable and frightening gift that allows her to see the souls of man-made objects—and this talent isolates her from the outside world. She finds solace in her only companions, Madeline and Nathan, but as the friends come of age, their idyll is shattered by jealousies and by Nathan’s interest in a cult led by Ariston Day, a charismatic mystic popular with London’s elite. A year later, Nathan has vanished, and the famed Inspector Vidocq arrives in London to untangle the events that led up to Nathan’s disappearance. As a sinister truth emerges, Jane realizes she must discover the origins of her talent, and use it to find Nathan herself, before it’s too late.

Young Jane Silverlake lives with her father in a crumbling family estate on the edge of Hampstead Heath. Jane has a secret ― an unexplainable gift that allows her to see the souls of man-made objects ― and this talent isolates her from the outside world. Her greatest joy is wandering the wild heath with her neighbors, Madeline and Nathan. But as the friends come of age, their idyll is shattered by the feelings both girls develop for Nathan, and by Nathan’s interest in a cult led by Ariston Day, a charismatic mystic popular with London’s elite. Day encourages his followers to explore dream manipulation with the goal of discovering a strange hidden world, a place he calls the Empyrean. A year later, Nathan has vanished, and the famed Inspector Vidocq arrives in London to untangle the events that led up to Nathan’s disappearance. As a sinister truth emerges, Jane realizes she must discover the origins of her talent, and use it to find Nathan herself, before it’s too late.

The White Forest

BRILLIANCE AUDIO ^

Young Jane Silverlake lives with her father in a crumbling family estate on the edge of Hampstead Heath. Jane has a secret — an unexplainable gift that allows her to see the souls of man-made objects — and this talent isolates her from the outside world. Her greatest joy is wandering the wild heath with her neighbors, Madeline and Nathan. But as the friends come of age, their idyll is shattered by the feelings both girls develop for Nathan, and by Nathan’s interest in a cult led by Ariston Day, a charismatic mystic popular with London’s elite. Day encourages his followers to explore dream manipulation with the goal of discovering a strange hidden world, a place he calls the Empyrean. A year later, Nathan has vanished, and the famed Inspector Vidocq arrives in London to untangle the events that led up to Nathan’s disappearance. As a sinister truth emerges, Jane realizes she must discover the origins of her talent, and use it to find Nathan herself, before it’s too late.

Jane Silverlake, a young woman from the wild heath regions of Victorian England, uses her paranormal ability to see the souls of handcrafted objects to infiltrate a mysterious dream-manipulation cult into which the man she loves has gone missing.

Literary

Brilliance Audio Lib Edn

Acclaimed author Adam McOmber offers readers an erotic and subversive reimagining of one of literature's most thrilling tales, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles. Dr. Watson arrives alone on the moors of the Baskerville estate to help solve the mystery of its scion's grim death and the murder's connection to the spectral hound that plagues the ancestral home. Watson's understanding of his own history and queer desires is sorely tested when he discovers Baskerville Hall is rife with stimulation and horror. As this supernatural mystery unfolds and reality begins to bend and break, he must work against the clock to discover the truth and prevent whatever beast roams the grounds from claiming future victims.

Hound of the Baskervilles: An Erotic Tale

Erotica

Lethe Press

"Adam McOmber could be describing Fantasy Kit as a whole with these lines: "This is my house. The one I've been telling you about…You think: I know that house…But I can assure you you're wrong about that. You've never seen my house." In reading Fantasy Kit, I felt like a visitor to a strange theme park constructed of smoke and clay, lust and the uncanny, wickedness and tenderness. Here readers are ushered into mazes and caverns, paradises and pleasure gardens; whisked to Neverland, Mars, ancient Rome, and a cornfield in Ohio. Throughout, McOmber writes with singular imagination and delight. These stories bewitch."--Michelle Ross 
"Adam McOmber's stories are the work of an architect and master illusionist. He constructs fairy tales that twist into labyrinths, labyrinths that open up gloriously into new myths--and always, as if just under the page, is the thump and flow of blood, the pulsing, hidden desire of the human heart."-- James Tadd Adcox 
"Evocative, inventive, disquieting, thrilling, sensual--here, to borrow a phrase, is story in all its occult guises. If, after you read the first story in Jackson's The Lottery, Poe's Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, or Carter's The Bloody Chamber, you couldn't stop until you'd finished the book, I have good news: You've found your next page turner. The stories in Fantasy Kit may be short, but their effects are potent. Prepare for exquisite pleasures on every page."--Gabriel Blackwell 
Fiction.

Fantasy Kit

Black Lawrence Press

Poetry

Black Lawrence Press, Inc.

She admits she is pleased when the new placard is raised, "Madame Tussaud's House of Wax." She stands in the crowd with François at her side. He leans close enough to touch her ear with the fringe of his mustache and whispers, "What part of the museum would the famous Madame Tussaud like to survey on her inaugural visit?"
"The Chamber of Horrors, I think," she says softly.
"Really, my dear? All that grim fantasy and blood?"
"There is no fantasy about it, François. It is an embryo, a showing of what is to come."
Blending historical fiction with fantasy and the macabre, Adam McOmber's debut short story collection brings the influence of Angela Carter, Isak Dinesen, and Edgar Allan Poe to the next generation. In "The Automatic Garden," a solitary architect from the court at Versailles builds a water-powered pleasure garden; in "There Are No Bodies Such as This," we read a haunted and romantic fiction about the creation of Madame Tussaud's wax museum; in "Fall, Orpheum," a small town movie palace becomes the temple for an entire town's devotion and sacrifice. McOmber seamlessly blends history, artifice, and desire to create a dream of the past that intertwines with our own notions of modern life.
Adam McOmber's stories appear in Conjunctions, StoryQuarterly, Third Coast, The Greensboro Review, Arts &amp; Letters, and Quarterly West. He is assistant director of creative nonfiction at Columbia College Chicago and associate editor of the literary magazine Hotel Amerika.

This New & Poisonous Air (American Readers Series)

BOA Editions, Ltd.

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Books by McOmber, Adam

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by McOmber, Adam. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The White Forest: A Novel

The White Forest: A Novel

The White Forest

The White Forest

The White Forest

The White Forest

Hound of the Baskervilles: An Erotic Tale

Fantasy Kit

Fantasy Kit

This New & Poisonous Air (American Readers Series)