Dead Souls

In Amazon Breakthrough Award–winner Fenn’s scarily dark second thriller (following 2013’s Poe), marketing executive Fiona Dunn walks into the Make Westing bar in Oakland, Calif., on the lowest day of her life, and surfaces hours later, worse for wear and certain that the man who called himself Scratch is no more the devil than she is. Fiona, fuzzy with mojitos, assumes that Scratch’s offer to trade at-will invisibility for her soul is just a put-on. The bill of sale pulled from her soggy skirt the next morning says differently. Whether you call it grisly horror or macabre fiction, this book is one of the scariest and best to come down the pike in ages. The characters are difficult but compelling, and the writing is seamless. The narrative twists and turns are reminiscent of Dean Koontz or Stephen King at their finest. This story is horribly, horrifyingly awesome. Agent: Jill Marr, Sandra Dijkstra Literary. (Sept.)