The Museum of Atheism

Synopsis

It is Christmas Eve in a mountainous, isolated prison community, the day of the baby beauty pageant. Ava is the star attraction. She's six years old. Ava’s older brother Jonny hears strange noises in the attic and sees his father go out late at night with a gun with their lodger, prison warden Leo. Daniel, a man who repairs sex dolls for a living, has just moved into the area and he is Ava’s biggest fan. There are rabid, wild foxes roaming the area, terrorising the community. The action culminates in a bizarre fetish party at the local strip club, a fox cull and the death of Ava. Finally, the secrets of her life are revealed.

Praise for this Book

‘A page-turning read, riddled with the stuff of nightmares; read it if you dare.’ —Clare Wigfall

‘As a reader you are investigating not just a murder, but also a setting and a language, for this rich peculiarity flows into the prose.’ —Alec Johnson

‘The Museum of Atheism is an inviting and sinister affair, sweet and deadly as a thicket of mushrooms, their dear deadly anklets and caps of toxic spores.’ —Joyelle McSweeney

Reviews of this Book

‘[Of ‘Murmurations’ anthology edited by Nicholas Royle] There's a distinctly gothic flavour to this anthology. What with a sinister Icelandic raven "bloody-beaked and full of eyeballs", the "atrocious cruelty" of gannets who claim children as sacrificial victims, and the mercilessness of Daphne du Maurier's notorious birds with their innate "instinct to destroy mankind", it's clear that these creatures inhabit a dark hinterland in which our subconscious fears of evil are realised.’ —The Guardian