Daughter from the Dark

A Moscow DJ known as Aspirin leads a carefree nocturnal life until a strange ten-year-old girl named Alyona appears and refuses to leave. She claims to be a musical prodigy who must perform a specific violin piece to find her lost brother, and every attempt Aspirin makes to remove her fails, complicated by a battered teddy bear that may harbor something far more dangerous than stuffing. The Dyachenkos weave quiet, unsettling magic through contemporary urban life, building a mystery about identity and what it costs to ignore the uncanny when it moves into your home.

Adam Verner brings a dry, grounded presence to Aspirin that anchors the story's surreal turns without melodrama. The novel's origins as a Ukrainian work in translation, recognized with the Rosetta Award for best translated SFF, give it an off-kilter rhythm well suited to audio; Verner's measured delivery captures the slow disorientation of a man whose reality keeps shifting underfoot. At just under ten hours, the pacing stays lean and the atmosphere never lets up.