The Happiness Collector

King (In the Garden of Monsters) highlights art and history’s importance to humanity in this immersive, heart-racing fantasy. Historian Aida Reale struggles to find work after she loses her teaching gig and her publisher goes under. Then she receives an eerily timed and out-of-the-blue offer from a mysterious company, MODA, inviting her to Italy to document various artworks and historical locations. With unbelievable pay and luxurious accommodations, it seems “too good to be true,” but Aida hesitantly accepts. Her task is to measure the happiness of each location she visits and report back to her strange new bosses quarterly. Dreamy fellow “happiness collector” Luciano Leto is equally suspicious of the gig and when he and Aida compare stories, they notice a pattern of terrible things happening to the places they document shortly after their visits. This mystery is solved when a goddess appears to them and reveals that their employers are gods working to erase human happiness. Aida and Luciano are mere pawns in a divine war, but it’s up to them to save the world. King’s prose can be somewhat overwrought, but her descriptions of Italy are wonderfully evocative and the mythological intrigue propels the plot at a brisk clip. Armchair travelers and contemporary fantasy fans alike will be thrilled. Agent: Amaryah Orenstein, GO Literary. (Dec.)