The Furies was published by Hodder & Stoughton in 2022. Five women appear at the edge of the Maine wilderness — starved, traumatized, one carrying a newborn infant. They have escaped from a community known as the Plagued: a doomsday cult that worships disease and contagion as divine instruments, and that has been breeding women as vessels for their leader’s children.
Parker, Angel, and Louis are drawn into the pursuit of the Plagued — a group that combines the physical danger of a heavily-armed militia with the fanaticism of apocalyptic religion and a connection to the supernatural forces that Parker has been fighting throughout the series. The Plagued worship something real — a force of entropy and dissolution — and their leader, Oryas, is both a charismatic madman and a genuine conduit for something beyond human comprehension.
The novel is among the most action-intensive in the series: extended sequences of violence, pursuit, and siege. But Connolly balances the physical threat with the series’ characteristic moral and metaphysical depth. The “furies” of the title are multiple: the classical Erinyes who pursue the guilty, the fury of the escaped women, the furious violence of the Plagued, and the cosmic fury of the forces that animate them.
Collecting The Furies
First edition (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 2022): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- UK first edition, fine/fine: $20–$40
- US first (Atria, 2022), fine/fine: $15–$30