Talulla Rising

Decidedly not for the squeamish, Duncan’s disturbingly raunchy sequel to his 2011 supernatural thriller, The Last Werewolf, finds newly turned werewolf Talulla Demetriou hiding out in a remote hunting lodge near Fairbanks, Alaska, mourning her dead werewolf lover, Jake Marlowe, by whom she’s pregnant. After Talulla delivers boy-girl befurred twins, vampires kidnap her newborn son as a sacrifice to bring back their mythic progenitor. With baby daughter Zoë in tow, Talulla sets out after the vampires in a quest to regain her son that will bring her in contact with more of her kind. Once a month she changes into a nine-foot-tall monster who lusts after her victims before killing and eating them, but in between gorges she fancies herself Moll Flanders, “immoral, shallow, hypocritical, heartless, a bad woman.” From time to time Talulla endures tortures that would have been more powerful if suggested rather than wallowed in. The philosophizing may strike some readers as painfully facile, even for a werewolf. Agent: Jane Gelfman, Gelfman Schneider. (July)