The Burning Girl

"She spoke of worlds, universes, as if they floated within some mythical, mystical sea, an ocean moved by currents and tides that swept worlds together, drifted them apart, to some pattern incomprehensible to the human mind. Dreams, she said, within the skull of God."

Holly Phillips, the award-winning author of In the Palace of Repose, achieves a stunning blend of fantasy and horror in her first novel, The Burning Girl. Evoking images as beautiful as they are disturbing, Phillips tells the story of Rye Coleman, a young woman with a past so mysterious that even she does not know it all. Caught between worlds at war, Rye's only ally is Daniel Bardo, a troubled ex-cop whose past is nearly as mysterious, and as dark, as her own. Rye and Bardo are drawn into the cross-reality conflict, and the deeper they go, the more obvious it is that Rye is faced with questions that even Bardo cannot answer. What is the source of this fever that plagues her? What does the fever have to do with her growing power over the travel between worlds? And as the war escalates out of control, can she use this power to save herself and her lover – whether or not he wants to be saved?