The Devil's Scribe [Kindle Edition]

Alma Katsu (Author)

Book Description

Fans of the Taker trilogy will love this original eBook novella featuring the series’ immortal heroine, Lanny...and Edgar Allen Poe!

In this eShort story, Lanore McIlvrae returns to America for the first time in 20 years—after decades of running from her past—to confront the source of her fear. The year is 1846 and Lanore—Lanny—has just landed in Baltimore after a long transatlantic crossing. That very night, she meets an “unattractive man with a high forehead and sunken eyes, and a tiny, pinched mouth like a parrot’s beak” who claims to write stories so dark and unsettling that he could be the Devil’s Scribe. His name? Edgar Allan Poe. Has Lanny finally met her match in this macabre man…or is it the other way around?

Product Details

• File Size: 379 KB
• Print Length: 33 pages
• Publisher: Pocket Star (March 13, 2012)
• Sold by: Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc
• Language: English
• ASIN: B006VFZPNU
• Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #56,945 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Lanore McIlvrae from The Taker, the Muse of Edgar Allan Poe May 17, 2012

By S. Agusto-Cox

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

The Devil's Scribe by Alma Katsu is an e-short story released by Simon & Schuster, and it's the first thing I've read on my Kindle! Can you believe it?! What prompted me to finally read on the Kindle?! You'll never guess, well maybe you will by the end of this unconventional review.

"He fell on the bottle before he took a seat, pouring two fingers of whiskey into his wineglass, streaked with the last of a red he'd consumed. Now that he'd gotten his invitation, his tentative edge fell away, replaced by relief." (from the e-story)

Lanore McIlvrae from The Taker meets with the one and only Edgar Allan Poe by chance in an expensive Baltimore hotel in 1846 after having been gone from America for the last 20 years. Poe describes himself as an orphan and a widower able to support himself as the "devil's scribe," but Lanny seems passingly interested in his life story and the fact that he's a writer. However, in spite of her preoccupation with why she came back to America, she walks with this stranger through the streets of Baltimore, careful not to reveal too much of herself to him.

The story raises the idea of telling strangers secrets as a way to unburden the soul without having to deal with the same consequences one would have to deal with should they tell someone they know intimately or should they tell a family member. It is reminiscent of the relationship between dying soldiers and/or patients and the priest that comes to hear their sins, though in this situation, Poe cannot offer Lanny absolution.

Read my full review: <...>

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A novella about inspiration... July 23, 2012

By Jen

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

I have always been fascinated by the life of Edgar Allan Poe and also by his death. Much like the stories he wrote, his death was shrouded in mystery (or was it?). I am also a fan of Alma Katsu and the characters that she brought to life in "The Taker." When I saw that she had combined the two...I couldn't resist! And since I was waiting (patiently) for book two of the trilogy, I knew I had to read it!

Without giving too much away, "The Devil's Scribe" takes place in the time after Lanny makes a major "life" decision. She is traveling to Boston to check on her affairs as it were, and meets up with a mystery man who is mesmerized by her. He sees in her, I think, a kindred spirit. Someone who shares his darkness. He attaches himself to her and learns her secret. Perhaps inspiring him to write...

If you haven't read "The Taker", I highly recommend it as well. I have seen other reviewers say that they read this first, but I would read "The Taker" first. It will give you some insight into the back story.

Very well written and researched. Alma Katsu is an exceptional author, and one I hope is around and publishing for a long time.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars "I'd take a good-hearted laborer over a storyteller any day". July 22, 2012

By Fiamma

Format:Kindle Edition

The Devil's Scribe is a very well written and constructed novella.
The author, with only a few well crafted descriptions, manages to grasp your attention and make you feel like you are walking down the night streets of Baltimore and Boston, with the charming and haunted Lanore and her temporary companion, the shabby Edgar Poe. Lanore is in need of a confessor, Edgar craves a story.
The cause and the result of the nights these two companions spend together, is one of the most macabre tales ever written.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Lovely Union July 19, 2012

By JimJoyce

Format:Kindle Edition

Wonderful! If you like Poe, you'll love this. Lanny and Poe, such a unique union - if only for a brief time.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fabulous little teaser before The Reckoning July 19, 2012

By Rene' Gilliland

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

LOVE Edgar Allen Poe, So this Short on how Lanny meets him and tells him her story was great. And it just gives us a little more of Lanny's doings after she "Leaves" Adair.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars awesome! July 19, 2012

By trennag

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

What a great short! Got it at the same time I purchased The Taker and read it first. Loved them all and can't wait for The Decent!

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A Taste of what is to come! March 13, 2012

By Albert Garcia

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

A wonderfully written short story that happens in the midst of the novel that would be the Taker. It is the tale of Lanore, herione and villian of the Taker as she travels back to America in the 1800s to check on the package, I will be vague here as it does much to do with the novel the Taker and I don't want to give any away; and see that it is still secure as she left it.
As she arrives in the port city she runs into a strange little man who needs to learn the tale that is the life of Lanore. The strange little man is Edgar Allen Poe.
The Devil's Scribe is a taste of the crisp and flowing writing that Alma Katsu brings to her novel The Taker and the upcoming The Reckoning. A wonderful introduction to this new writing and her tales!

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Book February 1, 2013

By gail olson

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Enjoyed this over the holidays. It is a fast read and the story line in entertaining. This is my first book from this writer but not my last.

More About the Author

Ms. Katsu's writing has been compared to that of early Anne Rice and Shirley Jackson. A former intelligence analyst, she is a graduate of the writing program at Johns Hopkins University, lives in the Washington, DC area, and counts Edgar Allan Poe and fairy tales among her influences. Visit her at www.almakatsu.com

TRUE LOVE CAN LAST FOREVER . . . BUT IMMORTALITY COMES AT A PRICE. When a young woman, a self-professed murderer, is found covered in blood and wandering around in the Maine wilderness, she is brought to a doctor in a nearby town to be evaluated before she is incarcerated. But once Luke Findley - a recently divorced physician - meets the strangely alluring Lanore McIlvrae and begins to hear her fantastical tale, one that stretches impossibly over two hundred years, he is drawn into her world of magic and danger.

So starts THE TAKER, the first book in a trilogy of novels about devotion and betrayal, beauty and cruelty, and the need for each to find her own path to redemption. The story continues with THE RECKONING and will conclude with THE DESCENT (coming May 2013).

The TAKER was an American Library Association-Booklist Top Ten Debut Novel of 2011.

"A wicked, sensuous, shattering love story that I can't recommend enough. You have to experience it for yourself!"--Kresley Cole

"Reminiscent of Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire . . . an utterly readable blend of supernatural-powered fantasy, historical fiction, and existential horror." -- BN Book Club

"Enticing, sensual beyond any novel read in this genre in years" -- Horror World