In this moody, gripping period thriller, the shadowy world of the undead sucks in a beautiful actress and the man who would give his life to save hers… Gallagher skillfully weaves together vampire myths and the theatrical world of late Victorian England. Bram Stoker, future author of Dracula, manages the Lyceum Theatre company for celebrated actor Henry Irving. Stoker becomes an important observer on the scene when Tom Sayers, his opposite number in a much less prestigious touring company, is charged with a series of sadistic murders… Dark but splendid entertainment.

Kirkus Reviews

Vividly set in England and America during the booming industrial era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this stylish thriller conjures a perfect demon to symbolize the age and its appetites… Although Gallagher delivers horror with a grand melodramatic flourish, his storytelling skills are more subtly displayed in scenes of the provincial theaters, gentlemen’s sporting clubs and amusement parks where a now-vanished society once took its rough pleasures.

The New York Times

He’s an elegant stylist, a shrewd psychologist and a powerful storyteller with enormous range and depth. I finished his latest novel The Kingdom of Bones and I was honestly stunned by what he’d done. The sweep, the majesty, the grit, the grue, the great grief (and the underpinning of gallows humor from time to time). This is not only the finest novel I’ve read this year but the finest novel I’ve read in the past two or three years

Ed Gorman

From its attention-grabbing opening, this period thriller moves back and forth in time to tell a compelling story of a man battling against what he believes to be demonic forces … [Gallagher] is brilliantly successful at evoking the shifting, transient world of travelling theatres and cheap carnivals that provide the backdrop to his twisting tale.

The Sunday Times