Available Dark
Elizabeth Hand

‘Elizabeth Hand’s Cass Neary novels, rightly praised for their icy tension and remarkable darkness, are threaded, like the best of punk in any medium, on a bloodied yet admirably stubborn humanism.’
– William Gibson

‘I hate modern fiction; it usually sucks. Available Dark is the exception to my rule. It is wonderfully depressing—­the locations, the characters, the mood, the murders. It’s so well written, it reads true. I can think of no higher compliment.’
— Legs McNeil, cofound­er of Punk magazine

‘Fiercely frightening yet hauntingly beautiful, with a startling heroine you’ll never forget… Shimmers with gorgeous writing even as it scares the dickens out of you.’
— Tess Gerritsen

A searing and iconoclastic crime novel in which photographer Cass Neary, introduced in the underground classic Generation Loss, finds herself drawn into the shadowy world of crime in Scandinavia's coldest corners.

Following the death of reclusive photographer Aphrodite Kamestos the police would like to talk to Cass Neary, but before they can bring her in, Cass accepts a job offer and hops on a plane.

In Helsinki, she authenticates a series of disturbing but stunning images taken by a famous fashion photographer who has cut himself off from the violent Nordic music scene where he first made his reputation. Paid off by her shady employer, she buys a one-way ticket to Reykjavík, in search of a lover from her own dark past.

But when the fashion photographer's mutilated corpse is discovered back in Finland, Cass finds herself sucked into a vortex of ancient myth and betrayal, vengeance and serial murder, set against a bone-splintering soundtrack of black metal and the terrifying beauty of the sunless Icelandic wilderness.

In Available Dark, the sequel to the award-winning Generation Loss, Cass Neary finds her own worst fears confirmed: it's always darkest before it turns completely black.

Praise for Available Dark

‘Available Dark works well as a thriller, but it’s Cass who makes the book extraordinary. It’s rare to find a strong female character – especially a middle-aged one — who likes sex and drinking and drugs and doesn’t feel the need to apologize about it. Eight pages into the book she’s offered some crystal meth. She takes it. Why the hell not? Neither she nor the narrator blinks. There’s nothing coy or exhibitionistic about it, it’s just who she is.’
— Time Magazine

‘In this brilliant sequel to Hand’s acclaimed literary thriller, Generation Loss (2007), Cassandra Neary, “a burned out, aging punk with a dead gaze,” who subsists largely on alcohol and speed, confronts darkness nearly beyond her comprehension… A flash of incandescence counters final threats of death, and the all-encompassing darkness is leavened by a glimmer of hope. Stunning.’
— Booklist (starred review)

About the Author

Elizabeth Hand is the author of twenty multiple-award-winning novels and five collections of short fiction.  Her most recent book, A Haunting on the Hill, was named one of 2023’s best novels by the Washington Post, The New Yorker, and Harper’s Bazaar.  She’s been a longtime contributor of book reviews to the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and the Boston Review, among many others.  Her acclaimed novels featuring Cass Neary, “one of noir’s great antiheroes" [Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love] have been translated into multiple languages, and are being developed for a major television series.  She divides her time between the last of Maine and North London.

Paperback ISBN: 9781914391347

Ebook ISBN: 9781914391354

Publication date: March 2025

Formats: Paperback / eBook