A modern, heartwarming twist on Mary Shelley's classic, this compelling debut novel weaves an old-fashioned love story with modern science—and leaves us wanting more.

Lucy Morrigan, a young genetic researcher, lives with her boyfriend, Gray, in her crumbling family mansion. Surrounded by four generations of clothes, photographs, furniture, and other remnants of past lives, they are strangely out of touch with the modern world—except in the basement, where Lucy works in the high-tech lab she inherited from her father. Frustrated by her unsuccessful attempts to win tenure and bear a child, she takes drastic measures to achieve both: She uses a bloodstained scrap of apron found in the attic to successfully clone her grandmother.

Naturally, Lucy is hoping for a baby. Instead, she brings to life 22-year-old Mary. Alive in a home that is no longer her own, amid reminders of a life she has lived but doesn't remember, Mary is trapped in the strangest sort of déjà vu.