If living in the slums of Paris during
the Terror has taught seventeen-year-old Rose Estienne one thing, it’s how to
keep her neck out from beneath the guillotine’s blade: never talk to strangers.
Especially if those strangers are aristocrats, clergymen, or werewolves. Rose
is well aware that werewolves are nothing but gypsy scum, magical aberrations
that don’t align with the laws of reason, monsters that are sure to get her
killed if they don’t finish the job themselves.
At least, she is
well aware of it until she catches a werewolf trying to steal her mother’s
washing.
When Rose comes
face-to-face with Avar, she does not see a monster: she sees a boy not unlike
herself, starving and alone and afraid. And when one of the city’s militant
poor tries to kill Avar, she cannot help but stop the attack – an action that casts
her as a traitor just like him.
Rose and Avar
escape, but her family is arrested and thrown into prison, guilty by
association. She has neither money nor
political connections; her only option is to break her family out before they
pay for her decision with their lives. Rose turns to the one person she can
trust not to betray her to the police: Avar. He’s reluctant to help – he has
spent his whole life running away, and as they tackle the defenses of the
Conciergerie prison, his courage falters. But Rose, who always spills coffee
and tears clothes, is the only thing standing between her family and the
guillotine, and she is determined that this time, she will do something right.
A TERROR OF DARKNESS is a YA historical fantasy complete at 67,000 words.
Other projects include:
Letters to Oliver, a completed YA historical fantasy in epistolary format, sees Emily taken from her school of magic to have her season in London, and her letters, both sent and unsent, soon involve a nefarious suitor, a chase across London, and one very particular white rabbit.
And two works-in-progress:
Up in Smoke is a YA historical (with no fantasy elements) set in London during the Blitz. Sixteen-year-old Sophie Miller agrees to hide a young soldier who's run away from hospital in the hopes that she can reach through his shell-shock and find out what happened to her missing-in-action father.
And two works-in-progress:
Up in Smoke is a YA historical (with no fantasy elements) set in London during the Blitz. Sixteen-year-old Sophie Miller agrees to hide a young soldier who's run away from hospital in the hopes that she can reach through his shell-shock and find out what happened to her missing-in-action father.
