Curious Toys

"Hand--whose masterly oeuvre ranges from the eerie to the horrific, post-punk to magic--delivers another brilliant mystery.... Wonderfully imaginative and richly delivered."—Ivy Pochoda, New York Times Book Review

"Curious Toys is itself like a carnival ride: alternatively dazzling and terrifying, disorienting and marvelous."—Amy Stewart, The Washington Post

"Brilliant, bustling . . . While Hand paces her mystery with classic precision, the real reward of Curious Toys lies in its richly textured panorama of Chicago during a crucial period of change, and in its vivid characters."—Gary Wolfe, Chicago Tribune

"Deliciously creepy . . . Atmospheric . . . Hand's gripping plot mines the era's vagaries with aplomb."—Associated Press

"[Pin] is a remarkable young sleuth. . . . Curious Toys is a thriller to be savored-tough, funny, strange, and revelatory."—Michael Berry, Portland Press Herald

"This book contains a rare kind of perfection: Elizabeth Hand's rough, observant magic draws into its circle great historical accuracy, a cross-dressing central protagonist, a wonderfully tender portrait of the great Outsider Artist Henry Darger, a vibrant thriller plot, reflections on gender and its place in civic order, a helpful Ben Hecht, and one of the greatest climactic drop-the-mic moments I've ever read -- and does all this while patiently setting into place the warm emotional armatures that make Curious Toys so moving."—Peter Straub

"A well-crafted and deliciously unsettling period thriller."—Booklist (starred review)

"Hand is a mage of the page.... [Curious Toys] will enchant those who like tough-girl protagonists and antiheroes, as well as fans of historical crime fiction."—Library Journal (starred review)

"Curious Toys is wonderful! I stayed up late two nights in a row, transported. It will be catnip for readers who love Chicago, circuses, cross-dressers, and early cinema."
—Audrey Niffenegger, bestselling author of The Time-Traveler's Wife

"[Hand] crafts a gritty and winsome character whose sheer determination to catch a murderer makes this mystery novel whiz by."—WBUR

"This atmospheric novel will transport you to a world you've never imagined before."

"Richly imaginative and psychologically complex."—Kirkus Reviews

"An atmospheric crime novel... A phantasmagoric time trip tailor-made for fans of The Devil in the White City."—Publishers Weekly

"Glittering and scruffy as its carnival setting, with the deep gravity hold of a rollercoaster."—Lauren Beukes, internationally acclaimed author of The Shining Girls and Broken Monsters

"The latest novel from genre-crossing master storyteller Elizabeth Hand journeys from thriller territory straight into the heart of horror . . . A richly layered study of horror and sin and fantasy and reality, all in a peculiarly American vein. And it's scary as hell."—Chicago Review of Books