Land of the Dead: A Stoker's Wilde Novel

By Melissa Prusi and Steven Hopstaken

Book Overview

Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde unite once more to battle spirits and demons invading our world. Third book in the series. Grimdark Magazine called the first book an "addictive, clever and extremely fun horror adventure."

Book 3 in the Stoker's Wilde series

Booklist on the first book in this series, Stoker's Wilde: "Pass this volume on to readers who are hungry for more historical stories with a supernatural frame."

Science and the supernatural collide in this terrifying tale of witches, reanimated corpses and spirits invading our world from beyond the grave.

Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde have returned to their lives in London after their adventures in the American West. Bram is managing a theatre and Oscar is rising to fame and planning his upcoming wedding when they are once again called upon to battle supernatural evil.

Grief-crazed scientist Victor Mueller needs Bram's unusual blood for his mad quest to bring his dead wife back to life, and he'll resort to kidnapping to get it. Meanwhile, a young medium named Lorna Bow runs fake s ances in London under the thumb of an abusive uncle. When her mother Endora returns, Lorna learns the truth: they come from a long line of witches, and soon Endora has awakened Lorna's dormant powers.

When the scientist and the witches combine forces, all Hell breaks loose. Long-dead souls find themselves back in the land of the living, and some of them have scores to settle with our heroes. But as Mueller's ambition and her mother's desire for vengeance against the men who imprisoned her become clear, Lorna soon finds herself questioning the morality of their work.

Bram and Oscar must team up with American secret agent Cora Chase to protect all they hold dear. Only a mission into the Land of the Dead can stop Mueller and Endora from bringing back more souls.

Bram's wife Florence must call on the monster-fighting skills she honed in America, and even Oscar's bride Constance has to face new challenges as she learns how the supernatural has shaped her own history.

In an adventure that spans continents - and even other worlds - they confront old enemies and unknown dangers. Teaming up with old friends Teddy Roosevelt and Richard Burton and new allies like Arthur Conan Doyle and Nicola Tesla, they too must harness both science and magic to protect our world from intruders from the Land of the Dead.

FLAME TREE PRESS is the imprint of long-standing independent Flame Tree Publishing, dedicated to full-length original fiction in the horror and suspense, science fiction & fantasy, and crime / mystery / thriller categories. The list brings together fantastic new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices. Learn more about Flame Tree Press at www.flametreepress.com and connect on social media @FlameTreePress

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1787586413
• ISBN13: 9781787586413
• Release Date: April 2022
• Publisher: Flame Tree Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.7" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Possibly my favorite entry into the series!

I think we all need a series that we fan out just a little bit on (or in my case a lot bit) and for me, Stoker's Wilde is one of those series. It has such an awesome cast of characters from The Stokers to Teddy Roosevelt saving the world from the forces of supernatural evil. And really can you think of any historical figures better than Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde, and Teddy Roosevelt to stop the forces of evil and then men (and women) trying to control them? I don't think so. Dr. Victor Mueller is one of the members of the Order of the Golden Dawn that was not rounded up by the White Worm Society when the Black Bishop was taken down, in fact, he's been continuing his experiments in bringing people back from the dead quietly in Finland and he's succeeded! However, he needs Bram Stoker's special blood to continue his work and arranges to get Bram under his control by any means necessary. Meanwhile, in London, a young woman by the name of Lorna Bow is reunited with her mother who had abandoned Lorna for all intents and purposes at a young age. Now though Endora is back and she informs Lorna that she is not just a witch but a witch with the power to call people back from the dead. With the rise of the Spiritualist movement in London Dr. Mueller and Endora will join forces to create an army of the dead with the Black Bishop as its General. The Stokers and the Wildes must now face old foes in superhuman bodies and new foes hell-bent on playing god and with the White Worm Society in disarray, they have no hope for backup this time, they'll have to figure this out on their own and there isn't a moment to spare. I love this series! This time in history is so interesting because we really do see this mixture of science and the supernatural as is portrayed in the book. People may not have been trying to bring humans back to life but they were trying to create machines to communicate with the dead and all sorts of other things to "thin the veil". And it's because humanity had all of these new technologies at their fingertips like electricity that we are able to get this weird meshing of sci-fi and supernatural during this time frame. It was just the perfect time and the perfect place and Hopstaken and Prusi capture that feeling perfectly in this series! I loved that Dr. Victor Mueller is a nod to Victor Frankenstein, I don't believe you can write a series like this without giving Shelley her due and I enjoyed Mueller's character immensely because he isn't focused on very often in the book. We get just enough input from him to know he's not playing with a full deck of cards and then he just becomes the bad guy that has to be taken down. And the manner in which this Victor is able to bring people back from the dead is so interesting!! It's really a no-brainer when you think about it (I'm not spoiling it) and it makes perfect sense that this would be a way to bring people back but up until this book I'd never thought of it! I wrote this review without going into the background of the first two books, while I don't believe it's entirely necessary to read the first two books, I would recommend it as there are conflicts within the relationships with the characters that wouldn't make sense without that background, especially Florence and Ellen's relationship troubles. Overall, this was a solid entry into one of my favorite series and I look forward to the fourth book and I'm hoping Lorna doesn't go sideways. I liked her character!! And as always thanks to Netgalley and Flametree Press the eArc of this book, this review is being left voluntarily.