Cancer Eats the Heart (Paperback or Softback)

Welcome to Dark Rivers, a rustic northern town forgotten by most and beloved by few.

At its heart is Cannibal House, a crumbling Victorian mansion lorded over by Old Wick, a mysterious wanderer whose arrival in Dark Rivers signals a change—a strangeness that seeps into the bloodstream of the town.

For Nix, waging her own private war with multiple sclerosis, a haunted house and a cryptic drifter aren’t the strangest things she’s ever encountered. No, what unnerves Nix is the adolescent girl who has come into her house.

Her name is Daphne, and she is a vampire.

Daphne talks of Mister Brightbones, the one who gave her the vampire’s kiss—that touch of immortality. A gift that could free Nix from from her chronic illness, giving her a second life, written in blood.

But every gift has a price. Every choice changes the world. And as Dark Rivers teeters on the edge of annihilation, Nix must decide whether eternity is worth damning herself, and possibly the entire world . . .

“Paul Jessup writes like the page just said something rude about his mother.”
—Jonathan Wood, author of Broken Hero

“Paul Jessup is the ghostpoet of weird, writing words of unease that rattle like bones and whisper in dark corners.”
—Lavie Tidhar, author of The Circumference of the World

“[Paul Jessup] uses language to great effect to heighten the more surreal aspects of his world.”
—Eric Lahti, author of Better Than Dead

“Jessup’s prose sometimes recalls Harlan Ellison at his most extrav- agant, invoking a lurid, elastic environment steeped in ritual yet with delirious magic as well as weird science.”
—Kirkus Reviews for The Silence That Binds

“I am not sure Daughter of the Wormwood Star is actually a novel-to read it is to enter a sustained and fevered dream that is not spun out of plot and characters, but instead of madness, bliss, and passion. No, this beautiful book is too weird and magical to be a novel: this book is a spell. Read it and be ensorcelled!”
—Wendy N. Wagner, author of Girl in the Creek and The Deer Kings