The Opium-Eater

FROM BESTSELLING THRILLER AUTHOR DAVID MORRELL COMES A BROODING THOMAS DE QUINCEY TALE ABOUT THE COLDEST OF DEATHS AND THEIR HEARTBREAKING AFTERMATH. Thomas De Quincey—the central character of Morrell's acclaimed Victorian mysteries, Murder as a Fine Art and Inspector of the Dead—was one of the most notorious and brilliant literary personalities of the 1800s. His infamous Confessions of an English Opium-Eater made history as the first book about drug dependency. He invented the word "subconscious" and anticipated Freud's psychoanalytic theories by more than a half century. His blood-soaked essays and stories influenced Edgar Allan Poe, who in turn inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to create Sherlock Holmes. But at the core of his literary success lies a terrible tragedy. In this special-edition novella, based on real-life events, Morrell shares De Quincey's story of a horrific snowstorm in which a mother and father died and their six...