Grave Importance

A charmingly witty fantasy adventure starring Greta Helsing, doctor to the undead, who must solve a dangerous medical mystery at a secret French spa for mummies.

Oasis Natrun: a private, exclusive, highly secret luxury health spa for mummies, high in the hills above Marseille, equipped with the very latest in therapeutic innovations both magical and medical. To Dr. Greta Helsing, London's de facto mummy specialist, it sounds like paradise. But when Greta is invited to spend four months there as the interim clinical director, it isn't long before she finds herself faced with a medical mystery that will take all her diagnostic skills to solve.

A peculiar complaint is spreading among her mummy patients, one she's never seen before. With help from her friends and colleagues -- including Dr. Faust (yes, that Dr. Faust), a sleepy scribe-god, witches, demons, a British Museum curator, and the inimitable vampyre Sir Francis Varney -- Greta must put a stop to this mysterious illness before anybody else crumbles to irreparable dust...

...and before the fabric of reality itself can undergo any more structural damage.

Praise for the Dr. Greta Helsing Novels:

"An exceptional and delightful debut, in the tradition of Good Omens and A Night in the Lonesome October."―Elizabeth Bear, Hugo-award winning author

"Shaw balances an agile mystery with a pitch-perfect, droll narrative and cast of lovable misfit characters. These are not your mother's Dracula or demons."―Shelf Awareness

Dr. Greta Helsing Novels
Strange Practice
Dreadful Company
Grave Importance

Author: Vivian Shaw
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 09/24/2019
Pages: 448
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.40w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9780316434652


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 07/08/2019
Kirkus Reviews 07/15/2019
Library Journal 08/02/2019 pg. 1
Booklist 09/01/2019 pg. 58

About the Author
Vivian Shaw wears way too many earrings and likes edged weapons and expensive ink. She was born in Kenya and has lived in Cardiff, Oxford, and Baltimore. She has a BA in art history, an MFA in creative writing and publishing arts, and currently works as a professional freelance editor and proofreader. She writes about monsters, both in and out of classic horror literature; machines, extant and fantastical; disasters and their causes; and found family. She is the author of the Dr. Greta Helsing contemporary fantasy trilogy, Strange Practice, Dreadful Company, and Grave Importance. Her short fiction/horror fiction has appeared in Uncanny and Pseudopod.