Sean Stewart's previous novel, Mockingbird, was selected as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle, and one of the Best Fantasy Novels of the Year by Locus. Now in his most stunning novel yet, one of the most critically acclaimed fantasy writers of our time takes readers to Galveston--an island uprooted, and uplifted, by magic... Galveston had been baptized twice. Once by water in the fall of 1900. Again by magic during Mardi Gras, 2004. Creatures were born of survivors' joy and sufferers' pain: scorpions the size of dogs, the Crying Clown, the Widow who ate her victims. And the Island of Galveston would forever be divided--between the real city and a city locked in a sort of constant Carnival, an endless Mardi Gras...Praise for the award-winning novels of Sean Stewart: "Stewart writes about magic as if it were an everyday occurrence, with its own rules and reasons."-- New York Times Book Review"A wonderfully vivid and unexpected blend of magic realism and finely-observed contemporary experience."-- William Gibson"Stewart's prose is vivid and precise...startling and moving."-- Washington Post Book World