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"Alma Katsu is the reigning queen of literary historical horror." --An NPR Book of the Year

1944: As World War II rages on, a mysterious, deadly fervor spreads across America, transforming people into monstrous aggressors, each provoked into fits of unthinkable barbarity. It's a contagion that, according to Meiko Briggs, might have dark, otherwordly underpinnings.

But Meiko and her daughter, Aiko, have been forced into an internment camp in Idaho, where the disease rapidly unfurls, and nearly invisible, demonic spiders seem to follow. More dangerous than the illness are the doctors who swarm the camps as a result, increasing their control on those captured, and their violence toward them. When Aiko suddenly escapes, Meiko must race against the clock to find her daughter and untangle the secrets behind the fervor before it catches her first.

With a keen and prescient eye, acclaimed author Alma Katsu crafts a terrifying story about the danger of demonization, a mysterious contagion, and a deep excavation of how we decide who gets to be human when being human matters most.