"In the lush, baroque tradition of such classics of the macabre as Interview with the Vampire." - Booklife Prize How much are you willing to sacrifice for those who you love? Orphaned under mysterious circumstances and raised by her grandmother, Maia thinks she's left her tragic past behind her. Now a dreamy seventeen-year-old, Maia longs to find true love with her high school crush when she receives the appalling news that her long-dormant Cancer has returned, not just to mess with her romantic plans, but to ruin her entire life. One night, during her stay at the hospital, Maia is visited by a peculiar young man who confesses he is about to claim the soul of her beloved grandmother. But Maia offers her own soul instead and joins this gorgeous harbinger of death in an odyssey to the hereafter. The dizzying journey takes Maia and her beguiling companion from an elaborate ball, to a steam locomotive in the sky, to a...

If Death came to warn you about your imminent passing, would you dare to defy it? Young Bund Deutscher Mädel Peach lives with her mother in the quiet German countryside, longing to return to Berlin once the war ends and realize her dream of stardom as an Olympic hurdler for the Fatherland. At her friend's wedding to an SS officer at Wewelsburg Castle, the heart and soul of the SS, she witnesses a séance wherein a supernatural entity promises Nazi victory in exchange for seven children held prisoner in the dungeon. Sickened, Peach rescues the children and leads them across a war-torn Germany toward the Dutch border, with the SS forces in hot pursuit. On her perilous journey, Peach suffers all the horrors of war—loss of innocence, loss of dignity, loss of loved ones—all while haunted by the eerie company of the Harbinger of Death.