World Fantasy Award Winner Michael Crawford is forced to flee when discovers his bride brutally murdered in their wedding bed. Yet it is not the revengeful townspeople he fears but the deadly embrace of the malignant spirit that is claiming him as her bridegroom. But Crawford will not travel alone; soon he is aided by his fellow victims, the greatest poets of his day—, Byron, Keats, and Shelley. Together they embark upon a desperate journey, crisscrossing Europe and battling the vampiric fiend who seeks her ultimate pleasure in their ravaged bodies and imperiled souls. Telling a secret history of passion and terror, Tim Powers ( The Anubis Gates , Declare , Three Days to Never ) masterfully recasts the tragic lives of the Romantics into a uniquely frightening tale. Back in print for the first time since 1994, this newly revised edition of The Stress of Her Regard will thrill both Powers fans and newcomers to this gripping Gothic tour de force. Praise for The Stress of Her Regard “Good serious fantasy doesn’t come much better than The Stress of Her Regard .” ― Oxford Times “Strewn with literary personages and allusions, the book is entertaining on several levels....” ― Publishers Weekly “Powers’s framing of a vast, mysterious conspiracy, with ancient supernatural powers, hidden riddles, and secret societies, rivals anything written by Umberto Eco....” ― Blogcritics Magazine “Intricately laced plots, theories of magick advanced and practical, and strange-but-true historical incidents.” ― Green Man Review “...well-written and overflowing with imagination....” ― Bookgasm “Doing what Powers does best, by interspersing a dozen plot lines and characters with a bucket-load of paranormal and tying them up perfectly, he has conjured a tale that could be taken from the history books and taught as fact, and no one would even bother to challenge it. The unfortunate truth is that it’s not real, and that’s what it makes it all the more amazing.” ― SF Crowsnest Tim Powers has been compared to Michael Crichton, Neal Stephenson, and Clive Barker and was lauded by Kirkus as ““the reigning king of adult historical fantasy.” Powers' novel Declare , a supernatural secret history of post-WWII espionage, won the 2001 World Fantasy and International Horror Guild awards. He is the two-time recipient of the Philip K. Dick Award for The Anubis Gates and Dinner at Deviant’s Palace and a three-time Locus Award winner for Last Call , Expiration Date , and Earthquake Weather . His latest novel, Hide Me Among the Graves , is a sequel to his classic supernatural thriller, The Stress of Her Regard . Powers has taught at the Clarion Science Fiction Writers’ Workshop and has co-taught the Writers of the Future Workshop with Algis Budrys. He lives in Southern California. The Stress of Her Regard By Tim Powers Tachyon Publications Copyright © 1989 Tim Powers All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-892391-79-7 CHAPTER 1 ... and the midnight sky Flares, a light more dread than obscurity. —Percy Bysshe Shelley "Lucy," the barmaid was saying in an emphatic whisper as she led the two men around the foot of the oak stairway, "which I'd think you could remember by now—and keep your damned voice down until we get outside." The flickering lantern in her hand struck an upwardly diminishing stack of horizontal gleams from the stair edges rising away to their right, and Jack Boyd, who had just asked the barmaid her name for the fourth time that evening, apparently decided that taking her upstairs would be a good idea, now that he had at least momentarily got straight what to call her. "God, there's no mistaking you're one of the Navy men," she hissed exasperatedly as she spun out of the big man's drunken embrace and strode on across the hall to the dark doorway of the reserve dining room. The off-balance Boyd sat down heavily on the lowest stair while Michael Crawford, who'd been hanging back in order to be able to walk without any undignified reeling, frowned and sadly shook his head. The girl was a bigot, ascribing to all Navy men the faults of an admittedly conspicuous few. Appleton and the other barmaid were ahead of them, already in the dark dining room, and now Crawford heard a door being unbolted and pulled open, and the sudden cold draft in his face smelled of rain on trees and clay. Lucy looked back over her shoulder at the drunken pair, and she hefted the bottle she had in her left hand. "An extra hour or two of bar service is what you paid for," she whispered, "and Louise's got the glasses, so unless you two want to toddle off to bed, trot yourselves along here—and don't make no noise, the landlord's asleep only two doors down this hall." She disappeared through the dining room doorway. Crawford leaned down unsteadily and shook Boyd's shoulder. "Come on," he said, "you're disgracing me as well as yourself." " 'Disgracing'?" mumbled the big man as he wobbled to his feet. "On the contrary—I intend