Blood, paint, knowledge, and faith go to war on the streets of Paris in The Eighth Day Brotherhood, the debut historical thriller from art historian Alice M. Phillips. Phillips was inspired to write The Eighth Day Brotherhood while living in Paris to research her doctoral thesis on nineteenth-century art, spiritualism, and the occult.
Set in 1888, The Eighth Day Brotherhood begins with the corpse of a young man suspended between the columns of the Panthéon, resembling a grotesque Icarus and marking the first in a macabre series of murders linked to Paris monuments. In the Latin Quarter, occult scholar Rémy Sauvage is informed of his lover’s death and vows to avenge him by apprehending the cult known as the Eighth Day Brotherhood. At a nearby sanitarium, aspiring artist Claude Fournel becomes enamored with a mesmerist’s beautiful patient, Irish immigrant Margaret Finnegan. Resolved to steal her away from the asylum and obtain her for his muse, Claude only finds them both entwined in the Brotherhood’s apocalyptic plot.
Alasdair Stuart, host of the Parsec award-winning podcast Pseudopod, calls The Eighth Day Brotherhood “a flat-out sprint through the horrors not just of nineteenth-century Paris but the dark spaces where art, science and spirituality collide. Phillips balances massive knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, the time period with a lightness of touch that should be the envy of other thriller writers…Somewhere, Poe is nodding approvingly. And wondering why he didn’t think of this.”
About the Author: Alice M. Phillips is an art historian and museum curator living in Iowa City. Her recent exhibitions include Exploring the Demimonde: Sin and Temptation at the fin-de-siècle and Nocturnes: Night Skies in Nineteenth-Century Art and the Darker Side of Modern Art. She holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Iowa. Dr. Phillips is also a visual artist, Irish fiddle musician and step-dancer, and facsimile creator of rare historical medical books. She can be found online at www.mephistophelia.com/books.htm.
Copies of THE EIGHTH DAY BROTHERHOOD are available at all major booksellers, including Black Rose Writing, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble
Review copies available upon request
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