Placenta

St. Winifred's Maternity Wing was built on a very reasonably priced piece of land. Nobody asked why.Four hundred years ago, seven midwives were hanged in a field for the crime of practicing without a licence. One of them made a bargain. She didn't need to rise from that grave - she just needed somebody, eventually, to build on top of her.Now the newborns at St. Winifred's are arriving with five o'clock shadows, briefcases, and strong opinions about fixed-rate mortgages. One of them is suing the hospital. Only Dr. Rex Manning - obstetrician, author of the (out of print) textbook Manning's Deliverance, and a man who has never once questioned his own jawline - stands between St. Winifred's and an Administrator who has been signing birth certificates since long before certificates existed.She has never lost a baby on her table.She has also never told anyone what she takes instead.A hospital built on unconsecrated groundA demon who feeds on paperwork instead of bloodAn eleven-day-old solicitor with a briefcase and a grudgeOne doctor's textbook, and considerably less medical training than the cover suggestsTHE PLACENTA is a 30,000-word novel of cheesy, gleefully overwritten medical horror - for readers who like their scares with a laugh track, their heroes insufferable, and their bureaucracy genuinely terrifying.From Lee Emerick, author of Nightjar and Cul-de-Sac