Available Dark
Following the death of reclusive photographer Aphrodite Kamestos the police would like to talk to Cass Neary, but before they can bring her in, Cass accepts a job offer and hops on a plane.
In Helsinki, she authenticates a series of disturbing but stunning images taken by a famous fashion photographer who has cut himself off from the violent Nordic music scene where he first made his reputation. Paid off by her shady employer, she buys a one-way ticket to Reykjavik, in search of a lover from her own dark past.
But when the fashion photographer's mutilated corpse is discovered back in Finland, Cass finds herself sucked into a vortex of ancient myth and betrayal, vengeance and serial murder, set against a bone-splintering soundtrack of black metal and the terrifying beauty of the sunless Icelandic wilderness.
In Available Dark, the sequel to the award-winning Generation Loss, Cass Neary finds her own worst fears confirmed: it's always darkest before it turns completely black.
Elizabeth Hand is the author of twenty multiple-award-winning novels and five collections of short fiction. Her most recent book, A Haunting on the Hill, was named one of 2023's best novels by the Washington Post, The New Yorker, and Harper's Bazaar. She's been a longtime contributor of book reviews to the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and the Boston Review, among many others. Her acclaimed novels featuring Cass Neary, "one of noir's great antiheroes" [Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love] have been translated into multiple languages, and are being developed for a major television series. She divides her time between the last of Maine and North London.