DARKNESS BELOW

Cottrell pays homage to the work of H. P. Lovecraft in this first paranormal New Adult novel in a planned series.

Miskatonic University has known its share of darkness. Set on a hill above the spooky New England town of Arkham, the school’s buildings once housed an asylum for the mentally ill with a torturous reputation. Now it trains its students—many of whom have extrasensory gifts—in the investigation of the paranormal. College junior Ellen Logan came to Miskatonic to hone her psychic abilities. In her spare time, she works at the local New Age bookshop, helping customers with their supernatural problems. When Ellen’s friend Stephanie Lansdale dies in a fall from the university’s clock tower—seemingly by suicide—Ellen finds she now has some supernatural problems of her own. Stephanie’s boyfriend, Joey Richards, disappears soon afterward, leaving Ellen a strange leatherbound book and a million questions. It seems Stephanie and Joey were researching a tragedy that happened in a local mine back in the 1940s. Now, with the help of Miskatonic’s legendary professor of the weird, Andrew Carter, Ellen takes up the investigation, which leads her to discover an evil beyond her comprehension. Cottrell marries some of the baroque style of Lovecraft’s fiction with a contemporary New Adult tone; here, for instance, Ellen’s professor unbinds her after performing a magic ritual: “Ellen propped herself on her elbows, watching him untie her. A warm flush coursed through her, surging between her legs. Crush. The word, like the sensation, struck like a bolt out of the blue. Oh God, do I have crush on Andrew Carter?” The fictional universe in these pages has a metafictional relationship with Lovecraft’s mythos; Lovecraft’s horror stories and the Batman videogame Arkham Asylum also exist in it, for example, and some purists may grumble at this narrative choice. Fans of spooky tales of academia, though, are sure to enjoy this creepy offering and look forward to sequels.

A goosebump-inducing dark fantasy set at a supernatural institute of higher learning.