The Death and Birth of Iliana Marek

A young man with a terrible past finds his unlikely protector: the oddly-altered enforcer of a backwater Florida town. Edgar Award-winner David Liss's latest novel reads like Hiaasen meets Crichton—a razor-sharp allegory pulled straight from today’s headlines.

Who is Iliana Marek? Is she the bully who alongside her foster father police chief Bryce Hillard, controls and terrorizes Tylor, Florida? Or is she the reborn guardian angel of Dan Gibson, a social pariah responsible for the suicide of...