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  3. Babayaga

EBOOK

Babayaga

Toby Barlow
3
(1)
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Pages
400
Year
2013
Language
English
Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

About

By the author of Sharp Teeth, a novel of love, spies, and witches in 1950s Paris, and a cop turned into a flea.

Will is a young American ad executive in Paris. Except his agency is a front for the CIA. It's 1959 and the cold war is going strong. But, Will doesn't think he's a warrior-he's just a good-hearted Detroit ad guy who can't seem to figure out Parisian girls.

Zoya is a beautiful young woman wandering les boulevards, sad-eyed, coming off a bad breakup. In fact, she impaled her ex on a spike. Zoya, it turns out, has been a beautiful young woman for hundreds of years; she and her far more traditionally witchy-looking companion, Elga, have been thriving unnoticed in the bloody froth of Europe's wars.

Inspector Vidot is a hardworking Paris police detective who cherishes quiet nights at home. But when, he follows a lead from a grisly murder to the abode of an ugly old woman, he finds himself turned into a flea.

Oliver is a patrician, fun-loving American who has come to France to start a literary journal with the help of friends in D.C. who ask a few favors in return. He's in well over his head, but it's nothing that a cocktail can't fix. Right?

Add a few chance encounters, a chorus of some more angry witches, a strung-out jazzman or two, a weaponized LSD program, and a cache of rifles buried in the Bois de Bologne-and that's a novel! But while, Toby Barlow's Babayaga may start as just a joyful romp though the City of Light, it quickly grows into a daring, moving exploration of love, mortality, and responsibility.

Related Subjects

  • Literary
  • Adult Fiction

Reviews

"This supernatural-spy-thriller-romance-history is one of the most entertaining books you'll read [this season]--or decade."
San Francisco Chronicle
"Tolkien meets Graham Greene meets Anne Rice in this wild, surrealistic caper."
New York magazine
"A fun brew of witches, CIA spies, and fraught romance....Barlow casts a magical spell."
People

Artists

Toby BarlowAuthor

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