Personal Darkness by Tanith Lee

Personal Darkness by Tanith Lee

The Scarabae, a mysterious family, who are not entirely human, have been forced to leave the burned ruins of their reclusive home in a remote part of England. Most are dead at the hands of Ruth, a child created through incest with the purpose of repopulating this ageing branch of the family. Scarabae must breed with Scarabae, but Ruth was a tragically misjudged experiment.

Rachaela, Ruth's mother, trails listlessly with the survivors of the Scarabae. She is one of them but still can't feel that she is. Yet where else does she belong? The Scarabae relocate to London, and roost within a baroque old mansion. Here, they lick their wounds, but bizarrely appear to be growing younger.

Ruth has also come to London. The people she seeks shelter with are often cruel or warped. Ruth cold-bloodedly removes them from the world. She has already learned how to kill, but not how to cover her tracks. When the Scarabae see news stories of a murderous black-haired girl, they know who's responsible. And they must call upon another strand of the family to help them trap and control this threat to their invisibility within the world.

Malach and Althene arrive at the Scarabae mansion; beautiful and merciless beings. While Malach initiates the process of finding and containing Ruth, Rachaela struggles to resist the ambiguous allure of Althene, who is far more than she seems.

First published in 1993, and long out of print, Immanion Press is proud to release this new edition, which includes seven illustrations and an introductory essay by Freda Warrington, author of The Blood Wine series.

Lee, Tanith: - Tanith Lee was born in North London (UK) in 1947 and died on 24th May 2015 at the age of 67. Because her parents were professional dancers (ballroom, Latin American) and had to live where the work was, she attended a number of truly terrible schools, and didn't learn to read - she was also dyslectic - until almost age 8. And then only because her father taught her. This opened the world of books to Lee, and by 9 she was writing. After much better education at a grammar school, Lee went on to work in a library. This was followed by various other jobs - shop assistant, waitress, clerk - plus a year at art college when she was 25-26. In 1974 this mosaic ended when DAW Books of America, under the leadership of Donald A Wollheim, bought and published Lee's The Birthgrave, and thereafter 26 of her novels and collections. Since then Lee wrote over 90 books, and approaching 300 short stories. 4 of her radio plays have been broadcast by the BBC; she also wrote 2 episodes (Sarcophagus and Sand) for the TV series Blake's 7. Some of her stories regularly feature on Radio 7. Lee wrote in many styles in and across many genres, including Horror, SF and Fantasy, Historical, Detective, Contemporary-Psychological, Children and Young Adult. Her preoccupation, though, was always people. In 1992 she married the writer-artist-photographer John Kaiine, her companion since 1987. They lived and worked together on the Sussex Weald, near the sea, in a house full of books and plants, with two black and white overlords called cats.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781907737862
ISBN 10	1907737863
Title	Personal Darkness
Author	Tanith Lee
Series	The Blood Opera Sequence
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Immanion Press
Year published	2018-02-09
Number of pages	336
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.