From the bestselling author of The Midnight Library, an
"irresistible...full of clever turns, darkly hilarious spins...Even if
you're suffering from vampire fatigue...The Radleys is a fun, fresh
contribution to the genre" (Associated Press).
Just about everyone knows a family like the Radleys. Many of us grew up
next door to one. They are a modern family, averagely content, averagely
dysfunctional, living in a staid and quiet suburban English town. Peter
is an overworked doctor whose wife, Helen, has become increasingly
remote and uncommunicative. Rowan, their teenage son, is being bullied
at school, and their anemic daughter, Clara, has recently become a
vegan. They are typical, that is, save for one devastating exception:
Peter and Helen are vampires and have--for seventeen years--been
abstaining by choice from a life of chasing blood in the hope that their
children could live normal lives.
One night, Clara finds herself driven to commit a shocking--and
disturbingly satisfying--act of violence, and her parents are forced to
explain their history of shadows and lies. A police investigation is
launched that uncovers a richness of vampire history heretofore unknown
to the general public. And when the malevolent and alluring Uncle Will,
a practicing vampire, arrives to throw the police off Clara's trail, he
winds up throwing the whole house into temptation and turmoil and
unleashing a host of dark secrets that threaten the Radleys' marriage.
The Radleys is a moving, thrilling, and radiant domestic novel that
explores with daring the lengths a parent will go to protect a child,
what it costs you to deny your identity, the undeniable appeal of sin,
and the everlasting, iridescent bonds of family love. Read it and ask
what we grow into when we grow up, and what we gain--and lose--when we
deny our appetites.
