Welcome to Litsy!

Life in small town America is hard for Jane. On top of the usual teenage troubles with peers and homework and boredom, Jane lives alone in a strange old house with her invalid mother. Her mother has been near catatonic for years, afflicted by some strange wasting disease. It's only Jane who keeps her alive, day in and day out. Day in and day out. Day in and Day out. But then one day everything changes. A new girl shows up in school. Her name is Sabrina and she sees something in Jane that she doesn't even see in herself. Their friendship will push Jane to unearth the mysteries of her mother's past and the dark history of her missing father. Forced to face a monstrous lineage, Jane will have to make decisions about just who and what she wants to be. "Victoria Dalpe's stellar debut novel suggests that sometimes you consume the ones you love. The prose is tough and unsentimental, yet evocative in its depiction of the cancerous nature of abuse. Parasite Life battens down on you--insidious and predatory." --Laird Barron, author of Blood Standard" "How do you breathe new life into the YA vampire novel? If you're Victoria Dalpe, you do it by wrapping a refreshingly humanistic interior and an incredibly compelling narrative voice in the Gothic, primal, atavistic horror that made the children of the night sing to us in the first place." --Orrin Grey, author of Painted Monsters & Other Strange Beasts "All relationships are parasitic. That's never been truer than in Parasite Life. A visceral and tempestuous ride through a genuine teen hell, Parasite Life is a beautifully written, gothic tale about that give-and-give-and-take in all kinds of love--familial and romantic--that slowly drain us dry even as they feed us. In Parasite Life, Dalpe tells a fine damned story." --Susie Moloney, author of A Dry Spell, The Dwelling, and Things Withered: Stories "A dark and stormy read! Parasite Life is the kind of book that makes you want to lock the doors and draw the curtains just so you won't be interrupted. Victoria Dalpe is such a charming woman that it's surprising to realize she has such a dark and macabre imagination--a classic tale whose Gothic roots run deep throughout the story." --Adrianne Ambrose, author of Fangs for Nothing, Confessions of a Virgin Sacrifice, and the "Betty and Veronica" Archie Comics "In Victoria Dalpe's compelling debut, seventeen-year-old Jane DeVry shares a house in a small New Hampshire town with a mother suffering from a mysterious condition whose symptoms include mysterious wounds and sudden bouts of screaming. When the friendship of a new student at school awakens new desires in her, Jane sets out to learn who she is, beginning an odyssey that takes her first into her mother's old journal, and then to the art scene in contemporary Manhattan, in search of a father she has never known. Smart, gripping, and possessed of real emotional depth, Parasite Life invokes the traditions of the Gothic while taking the form boldly into the twenty-first century." --John Langan, author of The Fisherman "Already trapped in a claustrophobic life which forces her to play caretaker to her own mentally ill mother, teenaged Jane is finally forced to confront the secrets and lies which surround her when her "attraction to Sabrina, a new girl at school, awakens hungers too violent to ignore. Victoria Dalpe's Parasite Life is a coolly sensual slice of darkness that reads like Anne Rice for the post-Twilight age." --Gemma Files, Shirley Jackson and Sunburst Award-winning author of Experimental Film "Parasite Life is a totally unique spin on the vampire genre. This dark and blood-soaked coming of age tale haunts and intrigues as the secrets of Jane's past are revealed." --Abby Denson, author of Cool Japan Guide and Dolltopia "Sensual, moving, and sometimes grim, Parasite Life explores the tough questions: what would you do for love? What would you do for need? And who would you betray to survive?" --Nancy Baker, author of Cold Hillside and A Terrible Beauty "Visceral but polished, grim but lush, and ultimately optimistic. A coming-of-age story in more ways than one." --E.L. Chen, author of The Good Brother Excerpt From: Victoria Dalpe. "Parasite Life." iBooks.