Alisa Kwitney

Alisa Kwitney has written novels and comics and previously worked as a Vertigo editor, experience that complements her interest in reworking familiar literary traditions. Corpse & Crown is the second volume in her Cadaver & Queen sequence, following the Victorian alternate-history world introduced in Cadaver & Queen. Inkyard Press published the hardcover in February 2019. The sequel shifts attention toward probationary nurse Agatha DeLacey and draws characters and motifs from Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist into a setting already shaped by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Ingold Academy has moved its work to London, where medical engineering, royal politics, and the needs of the East End collide. Kwitney brings these elements together as historical fantasy, speculative science, and adventure for teen readers. Her editorial background in comics offers useful context for the novel’s reassembled literary cast and quick changes of viewpoint. Corpse & Crown is best read as part of its continuing two-book sequence because it depends on inventions and relationships established in the first volume.