The Cursed District

A young metropolitan investigator, Flavius Ushakov, is sent for his free-thinking to a remote backwater, where he is almost immediately drawn into an investigation of a series of strange deaths. The locals are certain: Black Kasyan is roaming the district—a demonic rider who lures people with bewitching gifts.

Flavius, accustomed to relying on European science and common sense, dismisses the village’s fears. But encounters with the flour monster Kolob, devouring peasants, with a giant turnip that has taken control of an entire village, and with a revived carved-wood doll force him to doubt what the university books taught him to believe.