Zandra Mullins

In Sickness and In Death Zandra Mullins

October Willow Thorne grew up a disturbed child in a lower-class family in a small, conservative, southern town. She never expected her life to be any different than this, the poverty she'd always known. Shortly after she turned fifteen, however, she learned something significant about herself that would forever shape her future relationships - she was a necrophiliac. If such a revelation ever became public, in a place like Creststead Cove, Tennessee, she'd be hanged in the town square for sure. One other person shares her secret - her mother, Maris, with whom she shares a close relationship. And Maris comes to her own painful realization - if she truly wants to protect October, she has to send her away. By this time, however, October has realized her true calling. She's birthed a profitable business of catering corpses to other necrophiles who are willing to pay big bucks to have their dead lovers exhumed and delivered. But her path to wealth is paved with pain, and her mental and physical health begin to decline until what is real isn't as real as she once believed. Her life isn't totally devoid of intimacy, however - she begins a correspondence with an imprisoned serial killer named Cyrus who will never leave the confines of his cinder-block cell. She receives news that he is murdered by a fellow inmate and jumps on the opportunity to bring him home from his funeral where he belongs, forming a sick, morbidly romantic attachment to his corpse. Soon, this creates tension with her butler, Darius, who is so head-over-heels obsessed with her that he does all that she asks, and without hesitation, with October's mental state steadily deteriorating. In Sickness and In Death is the story of sick, demented love and how easily fantasy and the delusions we develop can become as livable, and more lovable, than reality. More than a dark love story, it's a gripping tale of sex, rape, murder, mystery and intrigue.