House of Wyrd

Writer: Maura McHugh
Managing Editor: Marie O’Regan
Cover Artist: Lisa Laughy
Publisher: PS Publishing
Editions: signed, limited edition hardback with endpapers (order here)
Product Code: 978-1-80394-573-6

‘Aly Wyrd, famous art provocateur and magician, is missing on the eve of the opening of her visionary project, the Path of Illumination. It falls to her estranged daughter, Pallas Trismegistus Morrigan Aylward, to navigate through dream, memory and arcane mystery to revisit her history with her mother in ’80s London and ’90s Ireland until Pallas catches up with present-day revelation by walking the road to enlightenment designed by her mother.’

ABOUT THE BOOK

“Poignant, wry and compelling. McHugh’s tale of family crises and arcane mysteries brings the magic.”

—M.R. Carey (Outlaw Planet, Infinity Gate)

“A colourful, mysterious Tarot-infused occult adventure, so vividly written that reading it was like having a weird and wonderful dream. It features two great characters: Aly, the “art-monster” single mother and her conflicted adult daughter Pallas—and now I wish for more stories about them.”

—Lisa Tuttle (The Mysteries, A Nest of Nightmares)

“Beautifully realised characters, a dark and magical quest at its heart and prose that’s a sheer delight—Maura McHugh’s latest novella is a joy to read.”

—Alison Littlewood (Path of Needles, The Crow Garden)

“House of Wyrd demonstrates what a versatile and erudite writer Maura McHugh is. I devoured in one sitting.”

—Priya Sharma (Pomegranates, Ormeshadow)

Review:

“House of Wyrd is a novella that does what the best horror does: it makes the strange feel familiar and the familiar feel strange. It walks the line between magic and psychology, between the supernatural and the all-too-human, and it never loses its footing. McHugh has written something that feels both timeless and entirely of this moment—a book about the cost of ambition, the weight of inheritance, and the long, winding road back to the people we love.

The mountain is waiting. Walk it.”

From a review by Jim Mcleod at the Ginger Nuts of Horror review web site