Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks; and when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one. It's not as if Lizzie had much choice. Her parents were trying to eat her. The weeks leading up to the Bordens' descent into cannibalism were stressful and strange. Something weird was happening to patriarch Andrew Jackson Borden and his second wife, Abby. They became increasingly paranoid and delusional, telling everyone who'd listen that someone was trying to poison them. But no one came to their aid. No one believed these wealthy, upstanding citizens of Fall River, Massachusetts, were being stalked ... until the morning of August 4th, 1892, when they were found gruesomely, violently killed in their home. Now it is 1894. In the wake of her trial, Lizzie has changed her name to "Lizbeth A. Borden," and she's bought a house on the other side of her oceanfront hometown--a sprawling Victorian mansion called Maplecroft. Her inherited fortune has been invested in a terrific library and laboratory, installed in Maplecroft's basement; and from this center of operations she observes and researches the supernatural foe that so hideously transformed her parents. Someone has to. And no one else even suspects what's truly happening. No one knows that just offshore lurks an ancient god, starved for blood. Its agents are masked, and eager to kill. They are ready to invade. But one woman stands guard on the shore between the ocean and Fall River. Educated, rich, and brilliant, Borden is also shunned and reviled by the very people she's determined to protect. She has seen the dark forces of the Atlantic firsthand, and she has no illusions. Every night she hears the tide bring messages of madness, apocalypse, and monsters. And she is ready to meet them all. With an axe. Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks; and when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one.... The people of Fall River, Massachusetts, fear me. Perhaps rightfully so. I remain a suspect in the brutal deaths of my father and his second wife despite the verdict of innocence at my trial. With our inheritance, my sister, Emma, and I have taken up residence in Maplecroft, a mansion near the sea and far from gossip and scrutiny. But it is not far enough from the affliction that possessed my parents. Their characters, their very souls, were consumed from within by something that left malevolent entities in their place. It originates from the ocean's depths, plaguing the populace with tides of nightmares and madness. This evil cannot hide from me. No matter what guise it assumes, I will be waiting for it. With an axe.