World Fantasy Award–winner Joyce (The Facts of Life
) introduces psychic, alcoholic rare book fraudster William Heaney in a gripping, emotional and satisfying tale. William's ability to see demons is one of many things that haunts him: his wife has recently left him; a beautiful demon-possessed woman is stalking him; and his favorite charity will close unless his latest forgery finds a buyer. When his friend Seamus, a troubled Gulf War veteran, gives William a strange book and then blows himself up, William finds himself on the brink of literal and metaphorical hell. Joyce effortlessly sustains multiple plot lines in smooth prose, by turns comic, philosophical and deeply terrifying. The result, while at times a bit marred by tacked-on political pontification, is a profound meditation upon the evils of cruelty, self-absorption, cowardice and inaction. (Oct.)
