Crypt of the Moon Spider (The Lunar Gothic Trilogy, 1)

Veronica Brinkley has mental problems, and she’s very likely depressed, but her husband just wants to pack her off somewhere as she is no longer fulfilling her “wifely duties.” It is 1923, and the book opens with Veronica being sent to the moon to become a patient of the Barrowfield Home for Treatment of the Melancholy. A renowned facility that has helped many, supposedly.

Once she is there she finds a mad doctor running the show. He identifies what’s wrong with the patient and which small part of the brain needs to be removed and replaced. Once the surgery has been performed, a stranger administers the spider silk to the brain, along with a few little spiders.

Things go from bad to worse for Veronica, as she learns more of the adherents to the former Moon Spider that live deep within the caves of the moon, and what Barrowfield Home has been doing for a long time now.

Ballingrud has an incredible skill and creating a complex and disturbing story in a short novella, and yet characters come to life as the story gets darker and darker, and readers won’t be able to tear themselves from the page.