Saint Peter's Wolf

A pair of silver fangs with a long and frightening provenance serves as the catalyst for one man's transformation to a werewolf in this gripping tale. San Francisco psychologist and art collector Benjamin Byrd first comes across the fangs when he meets alluring Johanna Fisher, soon to become his lover, who introduces him to a renowned collector of curious artifacts. From the moment Byrd sets eyes on the fangs, he is mesmerized. Recurring dreams of a beast ``padding in the darkness'' after him have haunted and terrified Byrd since childhood; once in possession of the fangs, however, he becomes utterly unafraid, waiting, ``as though for an old friend,'' for the beast to find him. And find him it does. Awaking from his dreams of the beast, Byrd is not in his bed but on his back lawn, shivering and afraid and yet, somehow, keenly alive, deliciously sated. Only when he starts to fear that he may harm Johanna in this altered state does Byrd begin to regret his terrible new power. But Johanna has secrets of her own, secrets that her lover cannot begin to imagine. Cadnum, an award-winning poet, spins lyrical prose. Lushly plotted and suspensefully told, this is genre storytelling at its finest. (June)