(For decades, the faded, rural upstate New York village has lain dormant-until it is startlingly stirred to life when one by one, three young girls vanish...Nightmares are turned into horrifying reality when their corpses are found, brutally murdered, each missing their left hand...Now, as the search for a madman gets underway, suspicion shrouds the quiet streets of Aurelius when its residents soon realize that a monster lives amongst them...But not even prayers can save their loved ones from the rage of a twisted mind who has only just begun his slaughter...AUTHORBIO: STEPHEN DOBYNS is the author of nineteen novels, nine collections of poetry, and the best-selling "Saratoga" mystery series. Briefly a reporter for The Detroit News, Dobyns has been a professor of English, creative writing, and poetry since 1968 and has taught at Syracuse University, the University of Iowa, and Brandeis University, among others. He lives in Boston with his wife and three children.

Despite its superficial resemblance to a whodunit, The Church of Dead Girls is not a conventional thriller. Don't expect it to be suspenseful. This is a literary horror tale--slow paced, contemplative, meticulous in its descriptions--about a formerly sleepy small town in which the crucial distinction between public and private life is dissolving as suspicion spreads like a toxin. The reader's guide to this process of corruption is a high school biology teacher--reserved, somewhat snotty, but a thoughtful man, and reliable in spite of his cynicism. He says, "It is dreadful not to be allowed to have secrets. Years ago I happened to uncover a nest of baby moles in the backyard and I watched them writhe miserably in the sunlight. We were like that." Ultimately you realize that the killer's identity, even the deaths of three girls, are small matters compared to the collapse of the town's very soul.

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