The Epistolary Executioner

In the Grand Duchy of Valkenrath, 1840, prisoner Adrian Ward, known as the “Epistolary Executioner” for slaying only the unfaithful, is cast into solitary confinement for refusing to become a prison informant. As he writes his confession in the dark, he unearths the bloody lie that was his first love—a deception that, like his own implacable pride, forged the man he became. A Stendhalian portrait of how character and circumstance grind together to produce an inevitable destiny.