Two sisters, one of whom happens to be a porcelain doll, face off against a magical crime family in The Porcelain Sisters, a hilarious, action-packed thriller from Daryl Gregory (When We Were Real; Spoonbenders).
For as long as Ruth can remember, she has always been with the doll Isabel, her sister. Now 26, Ruth is a college dropout and lives with Isabel in a motel where nobody asks many questions. Isabel is cranky and sarcastic, throwing telekinetic tantrums and driving people away before Ruth can get too close to them or even have so much as a one-night stand. When the two argue and Isabel is badly damaged in a fall, Ruth's only hope to repair her is to seek out the manufacturer from whom her late mother bought the doll in France. But Isabel's origins lie with a dangerous family of sorceresses, and one of them, La Fabricante, already has the sisters in her sights. As Ruth and Isabel search for a way to repair Isabel's porcelain body while attempting to evade capture, they uncover revelations about the secret life Ruth's mother hid and its link to their own pasts and possible future.
With punchy dialogue and a truly menacing cast of villains, including an immortal assassin and demons in crow and cat form, on Ruth and Isabel's tails, The Porcelain Sisters has a cinematic tone and the pace of a summer blockbuster with a Halloween backdrop. This zany, inventive adventure offers a thrill a minute. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library