Love, Sex, and Frankenstein

Description

An evocative, haunting retelling of the summer that should have broken Mary Shelley, but instead inspired her to write her masterpiece.

Villa Diodati, Lake Geneva, 1816: the dark summer that birthed a monster.

Eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley has fled London with her lover, Percy Shelley, and her sister, Claire. Tormented by Shelley’s betrayals, haunted by the loss of their baby, and suspicious of her sister’s intentions, Mary seeks a refuge.

But Lord Byron’s villa, lying under ominous, ash-shrouded skies, feels more like a trap. When Byron suggests each guest write a supernatural tale, Mary is as drawn to the challenge as she is, unexpectedly, to Byron himself.

And so an idea begins to form in her mind . . . It spills out of her in thick, black ink. A thing given life by her imagination.

Day and night, it possesses her. Her heart, her desires.

But is she in control, or is it?

In this hauntingly evocative feminist retelling, Caroline Lea delves into the female rage, creative madness and steamy scandal that bore the world’s most famous work of gothic fiction.
Binding Type: Hardcover
Author: Caroline Lea
Published: 10/07/2025
Publisher: Pegasus Books
ISBN: 9781639369690
Pages: 400
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 1.30″ H x 9.10″ L x 6.30″ W

About the Author
Caroline Lea is the critically acclaimed author of The Glass Woman, The Metal Heart, and Prize Women. She lives in England.