Guilt, broken families, people dealing with shame?
In Derek Nikitas’s debut novel, Pyres, three women’s lives converge when a folklore Professor is found dead—fatally shot in his car in a college town outside of Rochester, NY. From diverse backgrounds, the three women: the professor’s daughter, fifteen year old Lucia Luc Moberg; the detective, Greta Hurd, who is facing her own family’s collapse; and Tanya, the pregnant, former-junkie girlfriend of the killer, are entangled by tragedy and pain.
Throw in a gang who lights fires for thrills and you’ve got a combustible combination of small town dynamics: high-brow academia and working class townies vying for revenge and redemption.
Says Nikitas, “I like to explore what it means to be part of a family and what happens when families are torn apart."
Derek Nikitas has published stories in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, The Ontario Review, and Chelsea. Originally from New Hampshire, he has traveled to Prague, Sweden, England and Costa Rica and is currently pursuing his PhD in Creative Writing at Georgia State University. He is also a member of Killer Year, a website devoted to debut suspense writers.
