The butcher's daughter The hitherto untold story of Mrs. Lovett

Mrs. Lovett, the cannibalistic, meat-pie-making accomplice of barbaric barber Sweeney Todd, gets her own melodramatic backstory in this dark retelling of the Victorian penny dreadful from Demchuk (Red X) and debut author Clark. In 1887, journalist Emily Gibson searches for the infamous Margery Lovett. She believes she's found her in Margaret Evans, a self-described "prisoner" living among the sisters at St. Anne's Priory, whose story plays out through a series of letters between the two women. Margaret recounts her childhood as the daughter of a butcher and her time as a maid in the household of a ghoulish London surgeon, where she is impregnated by her employer and forced to flee. Though punctuated with occasional creepy incidents, these early chapters feel like perfunctory episodes in Margaret's gradual awakening to her power--which comes to roaring life when her child, purportedly stillborn, is snatched away from her. Adopting the Lovett persona and trade, a vengeful Margaret partners with psychotic Sweeney and the story goes full tilt ripping yarn, acquiring new energy and lurid gusto. Though the authors fiddle with the Sweeney legend as most horror and Broadway fans know it, they build to a startling final twist that readers will think worth the liberties taken. It's a bloody good time. (May)

In this epistolary novel, readers are introduced to the story of the murderous barber Sweeney Todd from the perspective of Mrs. Lovett, his accomplice who baked the human meat pies. Told in letters and newspaper articles, beginning with the police investigation of the disappearance of a young journalist named Emily Gibson, the book's clever structure will captivate. Via letters, the woman Emily believes to be Mrs. Lovett tells the story of her life: a start on Butcher's Row, playing maid to a doctor with secrets, life as a companion, and then as a baker. The clues revealed letter by letter increase the sense of unease and anticipatory dread, punctuated by correspondence from sources as Emily continues her investigation. The choice of language in the book and the change in tone between letters give readers a strong sense of time and place as well as clearly delimiting the different narrators. VERDICT Demchuk (Red X) and debut author Clark have crafted a grim tale of Victorian London with appeal to readers of classic horror retold from new perspectives, such as Lucy Undying by Kiersten White and Eynhallow by Tim McGregor.--Lila Denning