ELIZABETH HAND is the bestselling author of fifteen genre-spanning novels, most recently Curious Toys, and five collections of short fiction and essays. Her work has received multiple Shirley Jackson, World Fantasy, and Nebula Awards, among other honors, and several of her books have been New York Times and Washington Post Notable Books. Her critically acclaimed novels featuring Cass Neary, “one of literature’s great noir anti-heroes” (Katherine Dunn)—Generation Loss, Available Dark, Hard Light, and now The Book of Lamps and Banners—have been compared to those of Patricia Highsmith and have been optioned for television. Much of her fiction focuses on artists, particularly those outside the mainstream, as well as on the world-altering effects of climate change. She is a longtime reviewer, critic, and essayist for the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, among many outlets, and for twenty years has written a book review column for the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. She is on the faculty of the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing and divides her time between the coast of Maine and North London.