The Murders of Molly Southbourne

Description

The rule is simple: don't bleed. For as long as Molly Southbourne can remember, she's been watching herself die. Whenever she bleeds, another molly is born, identical to her in every way and intent on her destruction. Molly's parents trained her well. She knows every way to kill herself, she knows how to butcher mollys for easy disposal, but she also knows that as long as she survives she'll be hunted. No matter how well she follows the rules, eventually the mollys will find her. Can Molly find a way to stop the tide of blood, or will she meet her end at the hand of a girl who looks just like her?

Tade Thompson lives and works in the south of England. His background is in medicine, psychiatry and social anthropology. His first novel Making Wolf won the Golden Tentacle Award at the 2016 Kitschies. His second novel Rosewater is on the 2016 Locus Recommended Reading List, and his short story The Apologists has been shortlisted for a British Science Fiction Association award. He enjoys jazz, comics, and baking deformed bread.

The Murders of Molly Southbourne is so strange and well-written and well-conceived. I read it in one sitting and yet it follows me around wherever I go. I loved it. --Paul Tremblay, author of Disappearance at Devil's Rock A bold outpouring of flesh and crisis at once horrifying and familiar. --The New York Times Inventive, chilling, and professionally rendered. --Elizabeth Bear, author of Karen Memory This premise fleshes out the strangeness and the grace of the human condition as well as anything I've read. --Stephen Graham Jones, author of Mongrels and Mapping the Interior Tade Thompson's writing is as inexorable as a march to the executioner's block, layered with cold dread and an exquisite understanding of body horror. --Cassandra Khaw, author of the Persons Non Grata series The Murders of Molly Southbourne is bloody, quiet, haunting, and sharp--a book worth savoring. --Max Gladstone, author of the Craft Sequence This bloody exploration of identity and self in a changed world will stay with readers long after they finish the last page. --Publishers Weekly A bloody, intriguing puzzle of a novella. --Kirkus An enormously vivid, enormously peculiar novel... compellingly written. --Locus Excellent, bloody, unsettling. --The Book Smugglers The Murders of Molly Southbourne reaches deep into the heart of existence and drags our fears into the sunlight. An excellent, terrifying read. --Fran Wilde, award-winning author of Updraft, Cloudbound, and Horizon Tade Thompson weaves a subtle, surreal tale of life, death, love and damnation around an absolutely unforgettable heroine. Molly will terrify you, even as she breaks your heart. --Stephanie Saulter, author of the (R)Evolution books By turns disturbing, fascinating and heartbreaking, and mesmerizing from first to last. --Simon Bestwick, author of the Black Road series and The Feast Of All Souls "Viciously real. Chillingly absurd. There's a visceral, bloody logic to Tade Thompson's tale of self murder." --Jon Courtenay Grimwood, author of The Fallen Blade A story to make your skin crawl and your veins feel full of dark secrets. --Sophia McDougall, author of the Romanitas trilogy, Mars Evacuees and Space Hostages "A darkly compelling, offbeat tale punctuated by memorable characters and an endlessly fascinating mystery. The dark imagination of Tade Thompson is a wondrous thing to behold." --Maurice Broaddus, author of Buffalo Soldier "A novella that showcases the emotional depth of this writer, Tade Thompson's The Murders of Molly Southbourne is utterly compelling, dark and disturbing." --Kaaron Warren, author of Slights