The Promise of Plague Wolves

AUSTRIA. 1686.

Two plagues rage in the countryside. One plague is smallpox, a torturous disease that ravages the body, turning homes into tombs. The other ailment is more mysterious, a scourge of occult origin, a plague that ravages the mind and consumes the soul. Here the deepest horrors are made manifest. Here the dead walk the shadowed wood. Here a spirit and its brood of changelings emerge from the earth to feed. Into this malefic maelstrom enters Dorin Toth, famed occultist and investigator. Accompanied by his faithful greyhound, Vinegar Tom, Toth must find the source of the eldritch epidemic. Will Toth and Tom prevail against the blights that they uncover? Or will the dark storm of ghosts consume them?

Coy Hall lives in West Virginia, where he splits time as an author and professor of history. As a historian, he studies Medieval and Early Modern Europe. History influences his fiction, with many of his stories set in the distant past-sometimes the real past, sometimes an imagined one, but most often a mix of the two.Other influences include authors Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler, Fritz Leiber, M.R. James, Chester Himes, and Shirley Jackson. Radio drama series like Inner Sanctum Mysteries and CBS Radio Mystery Theater, and films such as Nosferatu (1922) and The Black Cat (1934) have also shaped his storytelling.