Colder

The brightest people are vanishing. A few are found, hundreds of miles from where they were last seen, gibbering senselessly. The rest seem to be ending up as little piles of dust among advanced - but melting - technology in remote locations. This is all very puzzling to FBI Special Agent Shaman Esker and his team. He will go on to find a rare True Human: among the few homo verus left who are neither Family nor Cattle, that is, have not been genetically tampered with thousands of years ago.

Meanwhile, Talitha Tamelin is pondering what to do about her otherwise brilliant sister who, like the rest of her family throughout the centuries, worships a cosmic monster called Ithaqua. They are the last remaining members of this old line of strange beings claiming to possess supernatural powers to use against monsters named Cthulhu, Yig, Tsathaqqua and other unlikely creatures. Easily-disproven nonsense, except that she herself possesses unexplainable abilities.

Colder is the first book of The Tamelin Light series, introducing characters discovering their places among the species of humanity made millennia ago by the ancient god Nyarlathotep.