Salina native Andrea Berthot will sign copies of her novel “The Heartless City” from 1-3 p.m. on Saturday, October 10th in Salina Public Library’s Information Services.

“The Heartless City” is set in an alternative 1903 London. Dr. Henry Jekyll aimed to free mankind of selfishness and vice but instead created a drug that corrupted its users at the genetic level, leaving them liable to transform into monsters without warning. Seventeen-year-old Elliot Morrissey has had his own devastating brush with science, downing a potion meant to remove his human weaknesses and finding instead that he’s become an empath. He finds an unlikely ally in Iris Faye, a waitress at one of the city’s rowdier music halls. Iris, however, is more than what she seems, and reveals a mission to bring down the establishment that has crippled the people of London. Together, they aim to discover who’s really pulling the strings in Jekyll’s wake.

This is Berthot’s first novel. She has had short stories published in Room Magazine, Luna Station Quarterly, Moondance and Melusine or Woman in the 21st Century. She won first place in the 2006 Kansas Author’s Club Literary Contest and second place in the Kansas Writer’s Association’s “Between Fences Poetry & Writers” in 2007. She teaches English and creative writing in Arkansas City and lives with her husband and two sons in Winfield.

For more information, please contact Lori Berezovsky at loribere@salpublib.org, 785-825-4624, ext. 249, or visit the library at 301 W. Elm.