My Second Death

In Cooper’s chilling debut, English grad student Michaela “Mickey” Brandis, who’s lived for most of her 28 years in her parents’ garage in Akron, Ohio, receives a message that leads her to a condemned house, where she finds a partially flayed male corpse spread-eagled on a bed. Mickey has killed once, albeit in self-defense when she was 10, but she did mutilate the body afterward, so she avoids calling the police for fear of becoming a suspect. At first, Mickey’s suspicions fall on a friend of her older brother, Aidan Devorecek, who lives across the street from the house, but both she and the reader come to realize that the truth is much more disturbing. Cooper’s prose is full of dark beauty, whether in describing human viscera or the weather. Those willing to stare into the recesses of the human psyche will be most rewarded. Agent: Amy Rennert, the Amy Rennert Agency. (Mar.)