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Sign up todayThe Motion of Puppets
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Learn moreFrom the bestselling author of The Boy Who Drew Monsters and The Stolen Child comes a modern take on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice—a suspenseful tale of romance and enchantment
In the Old City of Québec, Kay Harper falls in love with a puppet in the window of the Quatre Mains, a toy shop that is never open. She is spending her summer working as an acrobat with the cirque while her husband, Theo, is translating a biography of the pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge. Late one night, Kay fears someone is following her home. Surprised to see that the lights of the toy shop are on and the door is open, she takes shelter inside.
The next morning Theo wakes up to discover his wife is missing. Under police suspicion and frantic about her disappearance, he obsessively searches the streets of the Old City. Meanwhile, Kay has been transformed into a puppet and is now a prisoner of the back room of the Quatre Mains, trapped with an odd assemblage of puppets from all over the world who can only come alive between the hours of midnight and dawn. The only way she can return to the human world is if Theo can find her and recognize her in her new form. So begins a dual odyssey of a husband determined to find his wife and of a woman trapped in a magical world where her life is not her own.
Keith Donohue is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Stolen Child, The Angels of Destruction, and Centuries of June. His work has been translated into two dozen languages, and his articles have appeared in the New York Times and Washington Post, among other publications. A graduate of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Donohue also holds a PhD in English from the Catholic University of America. He lives in Maryland.
Bronson Pinchot, Audible’s Narrator of the Year for 2010, has won Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Awards, AudioFile Earphones Awards, Audible’s Book of the Year Award, and Audie Awards for several audiobooks, including Matterhorn, Wise Blood, Occupied City, and The Learners. A magna cum laude graduate of Yale, he is an Emmy- and People’s Choice-nominated veteran of movies, television, and Broadway and West End shows. His performance of Malvolio in Twelfth Night was named the highlight of the entire two-year Kennedy Center Shakespeare Festival by the Washington Post. He attended the acting programs at Shakespeare & Company and Circle-in-the-Square, logged in well over 200 episodes of television, starred or costarred in a bouquet of films, plays, musicals, and Shakespeare on Broadway and in London, and developed a passion for Greek revival architecture.
Reviews
“Full of glorious detail.”
“Donohue’s masterpiece of psychological horror…is a tale of true love and the beauty of the mechanics of motion all wrapped up in one awesomely creep-tastic package.”
“Donohue adeptly blends reality and fantasy…Donahue’s novel examines how refusing to embrace the present and struggling to escape unavoidable circumstances can alter one’s life forever.”
“Fascinatingly bizarre…Patterned after the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, this dark tale embodies relationships, memory, choice, and consequences.”
“Set in the Old City of Quebec…Donohue’s magical blend of love story, myth, and supernatural suspense makes this a chilling and unforgettable read.”
“An engrossing novel of love, fancy, and enchantment.”
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