Publishers Weekly
12/02/2024
Dunlap’s clever debut explores medical history, queer love, and the cost of progress in 1828 Scotland. James Willoughby’s patrician, cash-strapped English family wants him to choose a wealthy wife and a dignified career. Instead, he decides to become a doctor, a lowly profession at the time. James enrolls in the University of Edinburgh, where Scotland’s strict human cadaver laws make dissection all but impossible. To make do, he turns to a private program run by Dr. Louis Malstrom, who obtains corpses from body snatchers, or “Resurrectionists.” In lieu of paying the program’s steep tuition, James agrees to assist the crew of Resurrectionists led by Malstrom’s brilliant young assistant, a man named Nye MacKinnon. Exhilarated by his medical studies and convinced of body snatching’s scientific necessity, James has his first sexual experience with Nye and the two fall in love. James’s excitement over his new life is tempered by a visit from his sister, who demands he return home, and by two thuggish Irishmen who attempt to control the Resurrectionist network with threats and blackmail. Dunlap melds comic, tender, and macabre moments in her well-plotted tale, and makes hay with embellished historical facts. Readers will be entertained. Agent: Laura Bradford, Bradford Literary. (Jan.)
From the Publisher
Praise for The Resurrectionist
"This perfectly ghoulish thriller expertly blends dark academia with historical true crime and unexpected romance. Readers will be delightfully haunted by the lush prose and atmospheric gloom." —B.R. Myers, author of A Dreadful Splendor
"Playing with a captivating point in history, A. Rae Dunlap weaves a story of queer love, coming of age, and macabre science against the richly-drawn atmosphere of a historic and beloved city. The result is a book hauntingly gothic, intimately told, and wickedly, wonderfully grotesque.” —Marielle Thompson, author of The Last Witch in Edinburgh
"The Resurrectionist is a wryly humorous and devilishly macabre cat-and-mouse thriller as dark as a midnight graveyard and as twisting as Edinburgh’s cobblestone streets. It’s an enthralling debut from a writer to watch." —Patrice McDonough, author of Murder by Lamplight
“Brilliantly researched and beautifully written. Dunlap expertly captures the history and cadence of the era, and the thrill and elation of discovery during the Enlightenment, as well as the dark and twisted depths that are the byproducts of progress. A clever tale filled with macabre intrigue and personal revelation.” —Anna Lee Huber, USA Today bestselling author
“Mixing a macabre gothic mystery with a sensitive coming-of-age tale and a touching queer romance, Dunlap has written an exciting, well-researched debut historical adventure.”—firstCLUE
"With wit as sharp as a scalpel, and a plot as dark and twisted as the Edinburgh alleys in which it is set, The Resurrectionist is a thrilling debut that will have readers turning pages deep into the night." —Hester Fox, author of The Last Heir to Blackwood Library
MARCH 2025
Tom Kiteley's wonderfully drawn narration of this darkly humorous historical debut immerses listeners in its time and place. James Willoughby, a well-born but impoverished medical student, finds himself drawn into an unusual employment arrangement in nineteenth-century Edinburgh. Kiteley captures James's ingrained class behavior and naïveté as he works for his surgical school's body-snatching operation in order to afford training in human dissection. James and Nye MacKinnon, a charming and passionate Scottish dissectionist, develop professional and romantic chemistry as they work together. One quibble with an otherwise great production is the French surgical instructor's slightly clunky accent. But, overall, Kiteley's vibrant portrayals of family, classmates, and friends enliven their world and add emotional weight as rival body snatchers begin killing off their competition. J.R.T. © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine
