In the tradition of The Alienist and A Love Story, a decadently macabre, dark and twisty gothic debut set in 19th century Scotland – when real-life serial killers Burke and Hare terrorized the streets of Edinburgh – as a young medical student is lured into the illicit underworld of body snatching. Historical fiction, true crime, and dark academia intertwine in a harrowing tale of murder, greed, and the grisly origins of modern medicine for readers of Lydia Kang, ML Rio, Sarah Perry, and C.E. McGill.
Graphic medical content.
Edinburgh, Scotland, 1828. Naïve but determined James Willoughby has abandoned his posh, sheltered life at Oxford to pursue a lifelong dream of studying surgery in Edinburgh. A shining beacon of medical discovery in the age of New Enlightenment, the city’s university offers everything James desires—except the chance to work on a human cadaver.
For that, he needs to join one of the private schools in Surgeon’s Square, at a cost he cannot afford. In desperation, he strikes a deal with Aneurin “Nye” MacKinnon, a dashing young dissectionist with an artist’s eye for anatomy and a reckless passion for knowledge. Nye promises to help him gain the surgical experience he craves—but it doesn’t take long for James to realize he’s made a devil’s bargain… Nye is a body snatcher. And James has unwittingly become his accomplice.
Intoxicated by Nye and his noble mission, James rapidly descends into the underground ranks of the Resurrectionists—the body snatchers infamous for stealing fresh corpses from churchyards to be used as anatomical specimens. Before he knows it, James is caught up in a life-or-death scheme as rival gangs of snatchers compete in a morbid race for power and prestige.
James and Nye soon find themselves in the crosshairs of a shady pair of unscrupulous opportunists known as Burke and Hare, who are dead set on cornering the market, no matter the cost. These unsavory characters will do anything to beat the competition for bodies. Even if it’s cold-blooded murder . . .
Exquisitely macabre and delightfully entertaining, The Resurrectionist combines fact and fiction in a rollicking tale of the risks and rewards of scientific pursuit, the passions of its boldest pioneers, and the anatomy of human desire.
Don't just take our word for it...
“The Resurrectionist is a wryly humorous and devilishly macabre cat-and-mouse thriller as dark as a midnight graveyard and as twisting as Edinburgh’s cobblestone streets. It’s an enthralling debut from a writer to watch.”
– Patrice McDonough, author of Murder by Lamplight
“Playing with a captivating point in history, A. Rae Dunlap weaves a story of queer love, coming of age, and macabre science against the richly-drawn atmosphere of a historic and beloved city. The result is a book hauntingly gothic, intimately told, and wickedly, wonderfully grotesque.”
– Marielle Thompson, author of The Last Witch in Edinburgh
“Brilliantly researched and beautifully written. Dunlap expertly captures the history and cadence of the era, and the thrill and elation of discovery during the Enlightenment, as well as the dark and twisted depths that are the byproducts of progress. A clever tale filled with macabre intrigue and personal revelation.”
– Anna Lee Huber, USA Today bestselling author
Taste the very first page
To hear my mother tell the story, my decision to abandon my studies at Oxford was enough to disgrace my father into an early grave. Regardless of his habits—his drinking, his gambling, his debts—in her mind, it was my own act of reckless rebellion that finally put him under for good.
To that end, it’s perhaps for the best that he wasn’t alive six months later, when I was nearly arrested for smuggling a naked corpse in a wheelbarrow down Chambers Street at half past midnight, but I fear that’s getting rather ahead of myself. The point is, my father’s shame in me apparently drove him to death out of sheer mortification, making the events which transpired in the wake of his passing the fault of no one but myself and myself alone.
In all fairness, my father never had particularly high aspirations for me, so the fact that I was able to underwhelm him so completely was quite the accomplishment indeed. As the third son of a modestly landed family, it was impressed upon me from an early age that I would require a livelihood—and not just any livelihood, but one becoming of a man of my station.
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