“It has many names: devil, djinn, firebrand, cazador, ogre, fomenter, beast—”Accidents happen every day, and the residents of Port Harrow simply chalk up the death of a beloved member of the community as misfortune. Everyone has an expiration date. But for Annemarie McCready, disaster has struck too close to home. It takes a lot of compassion (and a bit of tough love) from her best friend, Alistair Lucas, to keep her head above water.Something unnatural is stalking the evergreen-shrouded island, leaving behind a trail of destruction with no answers to be had. The sheriff’s department is stumped when Annemarie finds herself caught in the crosshairs yet again. When she and Alistair go in search of answers, they are taken on a wild ride of myth, legend, and reality, only to find themselves staring down the very thing disrupting their lives. Drastic times call for drastic measures, and no rest will be had with this unpredictable creature at large.
“Beauty and the Beast” meets the Russian fairy-tale, “The Lute Player.”After a raid on the family inn forces Anya Solovyova to flee her homeland, she finds herself in need of a new job. A friend secures a position for Anya as the housekeeper for an Arriborn noble, which sounds like a perfect opportunity. Her new employer, Dmitriy Vetrov, gives her free rein over the matters of his house, with only a few rules: don’t go into his study, and don’t go into the west bedroom. Unfortunately Anya has a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time…As she uncovers the truth about Dmitriy and his bloodstained past, Anya must challenge herself to face a silencer—the same type of trained killer that slaughtered her sister—and see him as more than a sword. And when a vengeful Nobility Council places Dmitriy under arrest, is Anya able (and willing) to stand up for him?
When Kat Stempien discovers a mysterious postcard among her late great-grandmother’s belongings, she is drawn back to her ancestral homeland of Poland. What begins as a search for answers soon unearths a tangled web of secrets, forcing Kat to confront a past that refuses to stay buried. Her only ally is Marek Nowak, a man with his own complicated ties to the past. When his great-grandfather’s name appears in an old book linked to Kat’s family, their fates become intertwined. As they follow a trail of deception stretching back to the late 1930s—when Poland stood on the brink of war—they uncover a story of betrayal, resilience, and the dangerous lengths people went to in order to protect those they loved, and what they believe to be true. But some truths do not set you free. As Kat pieces together her family’s past, she must ask herself: is the past worth uncovering if it threatens to consume the present? Blending historical fiction, magical realism, a dual timeline, and Polish folklore, The Daughters is a story of lineage, sacrifice, and the inescapable pull of history.
