Heather Parry Bücher

Electric Dreams picks apart the forces that posit sex robots as either the solution to our problems or a real threat to human safety, and looks at what's being pushed aside for us to obsess about something that will never happen.

Based on a true story, Orpheus Builds a Girl is a novel of sisterly love, sinister obsession, and the battle for control of the story. A dark, chilling debut novel from award-winning writer Heather Parry.German doctor Wilhelm Von Tore shares with the reader the story of his one true ove; a love written in the stars, decades in the making, a love so strong it transcended death itself. When Wilhelm emigrates to America he carries with him a vision of a dark-haired beauty, presented to him in his dreams by his beloved late Grandmother. In Key West, Florida, a beautiful young woman is taken to him in the grip of illness, and he recognises her immediately as his promised bride. Despite his efforts, the sickness takes hold and his beloved slips away from him. But Wilhelm will not be kept from his destiny, not even by death. Using research compiled over decades, he sets about attempting to restore his love to her body, so that they might be together forever.But there's another voice in this story: Gabriela, and she will not let this version of events go unchallenged. From between the cracks in Wilhelm's story Gabriela recounts her own memory of her sister Luciana, a fiery and difficult young woman, and the madman who robbed her from her grave.

Set in a decaying Chelsea home, Marguerite finds herself confined in an attic by her mother, Cécile, who fears for her daughter's engagement to an older, impoverished solicitor. With only a sewing machine and a cookbook for company, Marguerite grapples with her mother's increasingly rare visits and the passage of time. This gothic tale explores the oppressive nature of societal expectations and the hidden secrets of a family, revealing the perils of conformity and the struggle for personal autonomy.

A hotly-anticipated modern Gothic horror story of sexual obsession, medical abuse, and coercion masquerading as love, for fans of Carmen Maria Machado and Eliza Clark “A chilling exploration of power, love and grief, written with incredible precision by a major talent” — Julia Armfield, author of Our Wives Under the Sea Based on a gruesome true story, this is a compelling, horrifying, and heartbreaking debut novel of sisterly love, sinister obsession, and the battle to control—and challenge—a perpetrator’s twisted version of events. Wilhelm von Tore is dying. As he looks back on his life he reflects on his youth in Dresden, his grandmother and his medical career during WWII. But mostly, he remembers his darling Luci, the dark-haired beauty promised to him years before they met. Though only together for a few months in her first life, Wilhelm knows their love is written in the stars. And he ensures that death is only the beginning. But through the cracks in Wilhelm’s story there is another voice–that of Gabriela, and she will not let this version of events go unchallenged. She tells instead the story of her fearless sister Luciana and the madman who robbed her from her grave. Creepy yet intensely gripping, sinister yet shot through with mesmerizing beauty, this is the debut novel from Heather Parry, a rising literary star of the genre, longlisted for the Polari First Book Prize.