New Author Spotlight: David Nickle

New Author Spotlight is a series designed to introduce authors with 3 books or less in the different SF/F subgenres.

Today's spotlight shines on David Nickle.

David Nickle's books include:

• The Claus Effect by Karl Schroeder & David Nickle (Tesseract Books)
• Monstrous Affections by David Nickle (ChiZine Publications)
• Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism by David Nickle (ChiZine Publications)

Here's the cover copy for Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism:

The year is 1911. In Cold Spring Harbour, New York, the newly formed Eugenics Records Office is sending its agents to catalogue the infirm, the insane, and the criminal - with an eye to a cull, for the betterment of all. Near Cracked Wheel, Montana, a terrible illness leaves Jason Thistledown an orphan, stranded in his dead mother''s cabin until the spring thaw shows him the true meaning of devastation - and the barest thread of hope. At the edge of the utopian mill town of Eliada, Idaho, Doctor Andrew Waggoner faces a Klansman''s noose and glimpses wonder in the twisting face of the patient known only as Mister Juke. And deep in a mountain lake overlooking that town, something stirs, and thinks, in its way: Things are looking up.

Eutopia follows Jason and Andrew as together and alone, they delve into the secrets of Eliada - industrialist Garrison Harper''s attempt to incubate a perfect community on the edge of the dark woods and mountains of northern Idaho. What they find reveals the true, terrible cost of perfection - the cruelty of the surgeon''s knife - the folly of the cull - and a monstrous pact with beings that use perfection as a weapon, and faith as a trap.

If you like historical fiction with a paranormal twist, you might also like:

• The Tomb (Repairman Jack) by F. Paul Wilson (Tor Books)
• Mr. Shivers by Robert Jackson Bennett (Orbit)
• The Terror: A Novel by Dan Simmons (Back Bay Books)