Pandora's box

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Dr Noah Close opens his door one dark night to find a woman on fire on his doorstep. She is without name, voice or past. Noah rescues her, heals her broken, burned body and makes her his wife. He calls her Pandora. But was Pandora ever made to live quietly among men? Her disappearance, bloody and mysterious implicates Noah who finds himself on the run and on a journey that takes him far from his clinical, ordered life to a private eye named Venus. Through the hot, dry desert Venus leads him to the lush depravity of Las Vegas, where nothing is what it seems, most particularly Lazarus who presides darkly seductive over the casino. Convinced that Lazarus holds the truth about Pandora, Noah pursues shifting shapes and truths with a reckless passion that endangers all whom he catches up in his search. It is Noah's ultimate fate to be damned and saved by the same truth - He that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow. In combining allegory and odyssey in a dark, bewitching novel, Alice Thompson proves herself to be one of Britain's most exciting new talents.