The Mills of the Gods [Hardcover]

A HARROWING SUPERNATURAL ADVENTURE, FULL OF COLOR, DRAMA, AND ROMANCE, AS ONLY TIM POWERS CAN DELIVER

PARIS, 1925

HARRY NOLAN is an expatriate American, making a meager living as an illustrator for a low-paying magazine, but his life is upended when he is assigned to illustrate an anonymous article about the death of a god—because a centuries-old French brotherhood, thesauteurs,are determined to suppress the story the article tells. Thesauteurshave burned the magazine’s office and killed the editor, and Nolan has the only surviving copy of the article. The author turns out to be a local writer named ERNEST HEMINGWAY, who—at first—tries to distance himself from the article and its lethal consequences.

VIVI CHASTAIN is a rootless 19-year-old orphan who sustains herself by betting on horse races—aided by the spirit of the man she was in a previous life. But now that old identity is crowding her consciousness, threatening to push her own precarious identity into oblivion. It was her alcoholic occasional “stepfather” who told Hemingway the story about killing a god, and thesauteursare now aware of the story—and of her.

TheSAUTEURSmaintain their identities past death through controlled reincarnation—when members die and are reborn, the brotherhood finds their newborn incarnations, kidnaps them, and raises them in special nurseries, where they can fully resume their previous lives. Vivi escaped from one of these nurseries when she was six years old, and so her previous identity has not yet consummated his possession of her. Thesauteurswant that consummation to happen—soon.

GERTRUDE STEIN is the hub of literary and artistic Paris, and knows many of the city’s supernatural secrets. She has written a book that appears to be nonsense but which can be used to deflect the kind of psychic assault that threatens lÃ4