Their Monstrous Hearts

DEBUT Time has run out for Riccardo, a 20-year-old orphan living off the advance for a book he is unable to even start, let alone deliver to his publisher. Then a stranger knocks on his door, alerting him that the Turkish immigrant grandmother he adored as a child has died rather suddenly and left her Italian villa and cherished butterfly collection to Riccardo. Riccardo goes to Milan, where he finds more questions than answers about his grandmother’s life, death, life, and obsession with butterflies. When he stumbles upon a manuscript in her handwriting, labeled “To Riccardo,” readers and Riccardo both begin to unravel the mystery. Told in the perspectives of Riccardo and his grandmother, what begins as a slow-burn gothic fable ventures out of its cocoon as a compelling, suspenseful, and lush grimdark fantasy, completing its metamorphosis with one final twist to emerge as an existentially terrifying tale that will put readers through the emotional wringer.