After discovering a mysterious card game, a family is thrust back in time to a medieval village where they must fend off dangerous werewolves each night.

Vanessa Springora tells how she found herself under the influence of a famous writer. In 1986, she was 13; him, almost 50. She explains how she was the victim of a triple predation: sexual, literary and psychic. But beyond her individual story, she also questions the excesses of an era, and the complacency of an environment blinded by talent and celebrity.

A single mother breeds locusts as high-protein foods but has trouble getting them to reproduce until she finds they have a taste for blood.