Kim Wilkins
First British Edition Gollancz Millenium (2004) |
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The Autumn Castle
Berlin it autumn: Christine Starlight is living in an artists’ colony in the crumbling urban shadows of the old east. Her lover Jude is a painter; his beauty and patience help her bear the chronic pain that is a legacy of the car crash that crippled her and killed her beloved parents.
Out of the blue comes a crimson-haired enchantress who presides over a land where a witch dwells in a well, a wolf is the queen’s counsellor and fate turns on the fall of an autumn leaf. For a brief span, the lands of faery and mortal man march hand in hand and Queen Mayfridh has taken the chance to seek out Christine, her childhood friend.
But dealings with faeryland are never simple: as Christine yearns for Mayfridh’s world, where mortals feel no pain, so Mayfridh in turn is becoming addicted to Christine’s, where there are tastes and textures and the danger of forbidden love.
And as secrets and jealousies and betrayals begin to unpick the threads that bind their lives, so yet another danger stalks them: the cruel and brilliant billionaire sculptor Immanuel Z. He too has faery blood, but he has a different use for Mayfridh and her kind: he is hunting faery bones for the grandest sculpture of them all ...
`Without doubt the most exciting writer of supernatural fiction working today’ Horror World UK
`Australia’s queen of the supernatural’ Daily Telegraph
`A narrative like the left jab of a professional boxer’ Sunday Mail
`An outstanding writer’ NW
| British Pbk Original - Gollancz (1999) |
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Grimoire
A compelling new novel by award-winning novelist Kim Wilkins
For centuries, magicians have compiled grimoires to call up demons. In Victorian London, one ambitious warlock, Peter Owling, designed a book of shadows to summon the Lord of the Demons - Satan himself. The plan backfired, Owling was killed and the book was ripped into four pieces and sent to the far corners of the earth. One fragment wound up in a shipment of books destined for the Colonies.
Now, at Humberstone College, a converted 19th-century Gothic convent in Melbourne, a power-hungry group of academics is reassembling Owling's grimoire, bent on the pursuit of eternal life. But they have reckoned without the interference of three twenty-something masters students: Holly, Prudence and Justin.
When Holly makes contact and falls in love with the ghost of the young man who was once Owling's assistant, the academics begin to fear that their dark secret - the grimoire which is so near to completion - is not as safe as they had previously thought.
| British Pbk Original - Oriel (1999) |
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The Infernal
Double winner of the Aurealis award In Australia for best horror novel and best fantasy novel in 1997.
Australian musician Lisa Sheehan has got life sussed. Her relationship with lead guitarist Brad is how she likes it (platonic), and her rock band - 747 - is on the up. Then, one by one, her fans start to turn up dead in the forest outside town, their bodies hideously mutilated, and her sleep becomes haunted by disturbing dreams and memories that aren't her own.
Can the murders in Lisa's twentieth-century life be linked to events in Elizabethan England? To a web of sorcery and betrayal spanning nearly four hundred years? Lisa embarks on a series of regressions which reveal that she was once the unmarried niece of a 17th century squire - a beautiful woman whose passion for knowledge and familiarity with herbs made some call her a doctor, others a witch. Caught in a terrifying spiral of violence and erotic obsession, Lisa must come to terms with the unholy pact she and her lover once made with the most infernal power of all …
Prize-winning Australian novelist in the vein of Anne Rice, Kim Wilkins was born in London and grew up by the sea, north of Brisbane. She has had several jobs, including working as a bass player for the noise band, The Vampigs (who broke up before they released their first album). She has obsessions with occult philosophy, Renaissance literature, demonology, mythology, Gothic novels and underground music, all of which have inspired her writing. She has a first-class honours degree in English Literature from the University of Queensland, and plans to continue post-graduate studies in the UK. She currently lives in leafy St Lucia with her musician boyfriend, Mirko. The Infernal is her first novel.
'A magical, terrifying story, The Infernal will raise the hairs on any die-hard's neck ... A good choice for Poppy Z. Brite fans, or for those hell-bent on scaring the pants off their family and friends ... Read it with the lights on' Weekend Books
'A richly bloody fantasy of necromancy, romantic and spiritual possession, sex and murder-most-mutilatory ... A real page-turner' Sydney Morning Herald
'Move over Poppy Z. Brite ... Wilkins has produced a book that will make your skin crawl and your hair stand on end' Herald Sun
'Has enough witchcraft, murder and erotic obsession to melt the coldest Tim Tam ... Off-beat but sharp barbs ... make it required reading for head-bangers' The Morning Bulletin
'Talented Wilkins seems at home in any century' Australian Women's Forum
'Horror novels written with intelligence and devotion are rare. The Infernal is one of those books ... For me, the pages never stopped turning' Severed Head
About The Author
Kim Wilkins was born in London and grew up in Queensland. She worked in a variety of jobs, in hospitality, as a typist, and as an alternative-rock goddess, before turning to higher education and earning degrees in English and Creative Writing. She is now a full-time writer and the winner of four Aurealis Awards; her novels include The Infernal, Grimoire, The Resurrectionists and Fallen Angel. Kim now lives in Brisbane with her partner Mirko and their son Luka.
Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.
The Autumn Castle
(Gollancz Millenium,
2004)
Jun 04
Grimoire
(Gollancz Pbk,
1999)
The Infernal
(Oriel Pbk,
1999)
The Autumn Castle
by Kim Wilkins
