Just about everyone knows a family like the Radleys. Many
of us grew up next door to one. They are a modern family,
averagely content, averagely dysfunctional, living in a
staid and quiet suburban English town. Peter is an
overworked doctor whose wife, Helen, has become
increasingly remote and uncommunicative.
Rowan, their teenage son, is being bullied at school, and
their anemic daughter, Clara, has recently become a vegan.
They are typical, that is, save for one devastating
exception: Peter and Helen are vampires and havefor
seventeen yearsbeen abstaining by choice from a life of
chasing blood in the hope that their children could live
normal lives.One night, Clara finds herself driven to
commit a shockingand disturbingly satisfyingact of
violence, and her parents are forced to explain their
history of shadows and lies.
A police investigation is launched that uncovers a
richness of vampire history heretofore unknown to the
general public. And when the malevolent and alluring Uncle
Will, a practicing vampire, arrives to throw the police
off Clara's trail, he winds up throwing the whole house
into temptation and turmoil and unleashing a host of dark
secrets that threaten the Radleys' marriage.The Radleysis
a moving, thrilling, and radiant domestic novel that
explores with daring the lengths a parent will go to
protect a child, what it costs you to deny your identity,
the undeniable appeal of sin, and the everlasting,
iridescent bonds of family love.
Read it and ask what we grow into when we grow up, and
what we gainand losewhen we deny our appetites.