Excerpt from The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

A year or two ago, David took up the practice of squeezing blood from the hearts of his victims into his hair. He was a furry man and any one heart yielded only a few tablespoons, but of course they added up quickly. Over time, the combination of hair and blood hardened into something like a helmet. Once, curious, she asked Peter how strong this would be. Peter, whose catalog included mathematics and engineering, looked up at the ceiling for a moment, thinking. "Pretty strong," he said meditatively. "Clotted blood is harder than you'd think, but it's brittle.

The strands of hair would tend to alleviate that. It's the same principle as rebar in concrete. Hmm." He bent to his pad and scribbled numbers for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah. Pretty strong. It would probably stop a twenty-two. Maybe even a nine-millimeter." For a while David had dripped it into his beard as well, but Father made him chisel this off when it became difficult to turn his head. All that was left was a longish Fu Manchu mustache.

"Where were you?" David demanded, shaking Michael by the shoulders. He spoke in Pelapi, which bore no resemblance at all to English, or any other modern language. "You've been off playing in the woods, haven't you? You finished up weeks ago! Don't lie to me!"

Michael was close to panic—his eyes rolled wildly, and he spoke in fits and starts, conjuring the words with great effort. "I was . . . uh-way."

"Uh-way? Uh-way? You mean away? Away where?"

"I was with . . . with . . . the small things. Father said. Father said to study the ways of the humble and the small."

"Father wanted him to learn about mice," Jennifer translated, calling over her shoulder, grunting at the weight of her rock. "How they move. Hiding and the like."

"Back to work!" David screamed at her. "You're wasting daylight!"

Jennifer plodded back to the pile and hoisted another rock, groaning under the load. David, six-foot-four and very muscular, tracked this with his eyes. Carolyn thought he smiled slightly. Then, turning back to Michael: "Gah. Mice, of all things." He shook his head. "You know, I wouldn't have thought it possible, but you might be even more useless than Carolyn."

Carolyn, safe in her hiding blind, made a rude gesture.

Jennifer dropped another rock into the underbrush with a dry crash. She straightened up, panting, and wiped her forehead with a trembling hand.

"Carolyn? What? I . . . not know . . . I . . ."

"Stop talking," David said. "So, let me get this straight—while the rest of us have been killing ourselves trying to find Father, you were off playing with a bunch of mice?"

"Mice . . . yes. I thought—"

A flat crack rang out across the clearing. Carolyn, who had long experience of David's slaps, winced again. He leaned into that one.

"I did not ask what you thought," David said. "Animals don't think. Isn't that what you want to be, Michael? An animal? Come to that, isn't it what you actually are?"

"As you say," Michael said softly.

David's back was to her, but Carolyn could picture his face clearly. He would be smiling, at least a bit. If the slap drew blood, perhaps he'll be giving us a look at his dimples as well.

"Just . . . shut up. You're giving me a headache. Go help Jennifer or something."

One of Michael's cougars rumbled. Michael interrupted it with a low yowl, and it went silent.

Carolyn's eyes narrowed. Behind David, she saw from the grasses on the western edge of the valley that the wind was shifting. In a moment the three of them would be downwind of her, rather than vice versa. In her time among the Americans Carolyn had gotten acclimated to the extent that their smells—Marlboro, Chanel, Vidal Sassoon—no longer made her eyes water, but Michael and David had not. With the wind coming from the west she would not stay hidden long.

Excerpted from The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins. Copyright © 2015 by Scott Hawkins. Excerpted by permission of Crown. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.