Luke Dumas is the author of the novel A HISTORY OF FEAR and THE PALEONTOLOGIST. His nonfiction has appeared in Literary Hub, Hobart, Last Exit, Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature, and more. He received his master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Edinburgh and is a graduate of the University of Chicago.
Curator of paleontology Dr. Simon Nealy never expected to return to his Pennsylvania hometown, let alone the Hawthorne Museum of Natural History. He was just a boy when his six-year-old sister, Morgan, was abducted from the museum under his watch. After a recent breakup and the death of the aunt who raised him, Simon feels drawn back to the place where Morgan vanished. But from the moment he arrives, things aren’t what he expected. The Hawthorne is a crumbling ruin and plummeting toward financial catastrophe. Worse, Simon begins seeing and hearing things he can’t explain. Terrified he’s losing his grasp on reality, Simon turns to the handwritten research diaries of his predecessor and uncovers a blood-soaked mystery 150 million years in the making that could be the answer to everything.