Fiend

Some families have skeletons in their closets. This one has a demon in its boardroom. When Maris Berisha was nine years old, she heard something scratching at the walls of her family’s penthouse. It felt like something malevolent was there, watching them. The Berisha family runs one of the largest import-export companies in the world, and they’ve always been lucky. Their rivals suffer strokes. Inconvenient buildings catch on fire. Earthquakes swallow up manufacturing plants, destroying harmful evidence. Things always seem to work out for the Berishas. They’re blessed. At least that is what Zef, the patriarch, has always told his three children. And each of them knows their place in the family—Dardan, as the only male heir, must prepare to take over as keeper of the Berisha secrets, Maris’s most powerful contribution, much to her dismay, will be to marry strategically, and Nora’s job, as the youngest, is to just stay out of the way. But when things stop going as planned, and the family blessing starts looking more like a curse, the Berishas begin to splinter, each hatching their own secret scheme. They didn’t get to be one of the richest families in the world without spilling a little blood, but this time, it might be their own

Alma Katsu has been writing novels since 2011. The majority of Alma Katsu’s books combine historical fiction with supernatural or horror elements. Her work has received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal; been featured in the New York Times and Washington Post; been nominated and won awards in the US and internationally; and appeared on numerous Best Books lists, including NPR, Apple Books, Goodreads, and Amazon. The Hunger (2018), a reimagining of the story of the Donner Party, was named one of NPR’s 100 favorite horror stories and continues to be honored as a new classic in horror. Her most recent horror novel, The Fervor, has been nominated for the Stoker and Locus awards for best horror and for best hardcover by International Thriller Writers. She also writes spy thrillers, the logical marriage of her love of storytelling with her thirty-plus-year career in intelligence. Red Widow (2021), her first spy novel, was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and nominated for International Thriller Writers’ Best Novel. The second book in the series, Red London, was published March 2023 to excellent reviews and has been optioned for a TV series.