The Deceiver

In the early years of the 20th century, the Harkness family is marked by abortion, incest, child molestation, and possibly madness. Perhaps it's their failings and their sins that allow the devil into their family life. But more likely he has been there all the while. Tem's epigraph for this novel comes from the moment in the Book of Job when God asks Satan where he has been. Satan answers, "Round the earth, roaming about."

Over the rest of the century, the Devil will appear in many forms to members of the Harkness family and to those who get close to them. He may be a large, overly friendly man or the sexy teenage girl who's just moved in across the street. He will always have about him a bittersweet odor, and his advice, while tempting, will never be for the best. Most will listen to that advice, with results that range from the mildly comic to the tragic.

This reads like a series of linked short stories, with Cecilia Harkness the long-lived female relative that holds things together. This is not a horror novel in any traditional sense. The devil is just another character, an important one, in this family's saga