Backpacking through Bedlam

Alice Price-Healy has spent fifty years single-mindedly hunting for her husband, Thomas. Now that she has finally tracked him down, she faces a question she never prepared for: what comes next? Thomas returns with a girl named Sally, a surrogate daughter who may be connected to Alice's newly adopted grandson. The three of them set out for home, which has always been the trickiest destination of all.

Home has shifted in their absence. The Covenant of St. George, angered after Verity declared war and Sarah moved an entire college campus, is working to wrest North America back from the cryptids and the cryptozoologists who have kept order there for a century. Its first target is New York. Alice has barely unpacked when the Ocean Lady and the Queen of the Routewitches send her and her companions into the city to lend a hand. They soon find themselves caught in a web of dragon politics, abductions and, above all, family.

The InCryptid series follows the Prices, a family of cryptozoologists who study and safeguard the creatures that live hidden among us. This twelfth installment is an urban fantasy by Seanan McGuire, who also writes as Mira Grant. Returning to ordinary life may prove the hardest challenge Alice has faced so far.