Photographing Fairies

Fairies. Delicate creatures, fine as gossamer, fleeting as shadows, and lovely as a shower of petals. Are they simply creatures of fancy and children's make believe? No. Charles Castle, an American photographer working in London during the 1920s, is dead certain that fairies really do exist. On a spring night, in an enchanted garden, camera in hand, he has staked his life - and his death - on it. On this bizarre, but utterly mesmerizing notion, award-winning writer Steve. Szilagyi builds one of the most extraordinary novels to appear in years - a blend of history and fantasy, mystery and mysticism, the scientific and the erotic. It all begins when a blustering country policeman, Constable Michael Walsmear, literally punches his way into Castle's London studio with what he claims are photographs of fairies. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whom Castle approaches to verify the pictures, offers a large sum of money to have Walsmear's photographs. Destroyed. But even more than cash, Castle wants the truth. His quest takes him to Burkinwell, a seemingly peaceful country village seething with secrets. Armed with a camera, he encounters gypsies and wild dogs, the innocent girls of the photos and the murderous thieves who threaten them, the most beautiful garden in England and the most unspeakable sexual practices. He also discovers the most shocking truth of all: that absolute purity and utter depravity are folded. Together in the human heart.