DEVIL'S KEY

Praise for Graves's previous novel, Black River:

"Not a book to curl up with late at night . . . not if you want to get any sleep."  —Edward Falco, author of Winter in Florida

 "Deliciously evil . . . [Graves] handles the genre with panache . . . The plot moves along swiftly, culminating in a gripping climax."    —Florida Times-Union

 "One of those 'can't stop reading' types of books. This novel will remain in your memory for a long, long time."  —Patrick Smith, author of Forever Island

 "A compelling story told with swift skill . . . a maelstrom of black magic, conjuring, and suspense."  —Page Edwards, author of The Search for Kate Duval

 Lucy Fowler plans to spend winter break on an island off the coast of Florida, to finish her dissertation. She needs one last interview with an elderly midwife there. But she almost cancels the trip after she's assaulted by another student on campus. At last she does go, hoping work will be therapeutic.

 On Ibo Key, Lucy learns midwife Esther Day is now confined to a psychiatric ward. She also discovers there was once a thriving black community, Revelation, on the island. Its residents all vanished one night, long ago. She decides to write about this ghost town, but no one on Ibo Key will talk about what happened.

 There's a terrible story behind Revelation's demise. Esther's rival, Soulange Koumari, owned a mysterious book. A centuries-old grimoire revealing the arcana of Obeah, which has since vanished. Lucy is determined to discover what happened to it.

 Then an odd little man at the hospital tells her the island is cursed: "Every man, woman, and child on it will soon die," and Lucy begins to catch horrifying glimpses of the past. But by then she's stranded, trapped in the path of a killer hurricane. To survive she must face her own connection to both the victims and the perpetrators of a long-ago massacre. A crime so monstrous it has provoked the interest of an evil old as time. . . .  

ELISABETH GRAVES, of an old Florida family, grew up in a small citrus-industry town not far from Disney World, her first employer. A former wardrobe assistant, theme-park waitress, seafood-joint cashier, graphic artist, advertising copywriter, and forensic librarian, she grew up in a haunted house on a Central Florida lake, home to many an alligator and poisonous snake. She likes to read the headstone inscriptions in old cemeteries in her spare time. Black River, her first novel, was originally published in English by Putnam/Berkley Books, New York, and in Norwegian by Fredhois Forlag, Oslo, as Sort Elv. Devil's Key was originally published by Egmont Boker, Oslo, in 1999 as Svart Frikt.