In a Latin American port city during colonial times, a young girl named Sierva Maria de Todos los Angeles, the only child of the ineffectual Marquis de Casalduero, is bitten by a rabid dog. Her father, who has shown no interest in the child, begins a crusade to save her life, eventually committing her to the Convent of Santa Clara when the bishop persuades him that his daughter is possessed by demons. In fact, Sierva Maria has shown no signs of being infected by rabies or by demons; she is simply being punished for being different.
The Demon’s Parchment is the third in Jeri Westerson’s "medieval noir" mystery series featuring former knight Crispin Guest, saved from the gallows several years earlier by his erstwhile lord, the Duke of Lancaster. Now a down-and-out investigator in London, Guest is aided by his young apprentice, nearly-reformed street urchin and cutpurse Jack Tucker.
This book argues that the source of Gothic terror is anxiety about the boundaries of the self: a double fear of separateness and unity that has had a special significance for women writers and readers. Exploring the psychological, religious, and epistemological context of this anxiety, DeLamotte argues that the Gothic vision focuses simultaneously on the private demons of the psyche and the social realities that helped to shape them.
The story is basically three short stories set in the Mississippi, New Orleans (pre-Katrina) area. The stories are chronologically laid out. They follow the adventures of Barbera (call me Barb) as she is recruited into a secret organization (ala X-Files) that fights demons, vampires, werewolves as well as other lesser known manifestations of the Supernatural.
