Tantrum

Thea's third pregnancy was supposed to be the calm one. No dread, no visions of a green baby or one with tentacles. She had decided that this child would simply be fine. Then the nurses placed Lucia in her arms, and Thea knew at once that something was wrong with her daughter. Lucia arrived with a full set of teeth and a devilish gleam in her eyes, and she is hungry all the time, with no sense of what is and isn't food. One day she points at her baby brother, stares straight at her mother, and says, "I eat." Thea can't decide whether she should be horrified or proud of this ravenous little girl. As Lucia grows and talks at a startling pace, Thea is pulled back into painful memories from her own childhood, images that have lodged in her heart and refuse to let go. Lucia wants to devour the world, and Thea may be willing to let her. Tantrum, from the author of The Insatiable Volt Sisters, is a darkly funny and unsettling horror novel by Rachel Eve Moulton. It looks at the debts families carry, the duties they impose, and the shadowed side of motherhood.