I devoured Sarah Hawley’s Servant of Earth, the first in her Shards of Magic triology, a romantasy that centers around Kenna, a young woodland girl, held in contempt in her village, who, trying to save her only friend, finds herself a slave in the opulent world of the Fae. These beautiful and magical creatures over-indulge in the pleasures and sins of life–sumptuous food and drink, complicated love affairs, glamorous surroundings, and evil machinations.
The world of the Fae is one of danger, false friendships, and death. To survive, Kenna must outwit and out manuever the most powerful of the Fae. You can read my review here.
I eagerly awaited Hawley’s second book, Princess of Blood, and was not disappointed when it came out earlier this fall. It’s darker as Kenna becomes enmeshed in a power struggle over who will rule the Fae, a battle that imperils her life and those of her friends and followers. Now, I’m hoping that Hawley is working hard on the third and final book in the trilogy as I’m eager to see how it all turns out.
I again had the chance to interview Hawley and thought I’d include the Q & A here.
Were there specific myths, legends, your previous work as an archaeologist or personal experiences that influenced the book’s political intrigue, power struggles, or Fae society?
I’ve always loved reading about the Fae in folklore and fantasy novels! They’re a fascinating combination of whimsical, deadly, beautiful, mercurial, and mysterious, and there are so many ways a writer can pay homage to that lore and take it in new directions.
Many Fae stories include underground elements because the folklore is tied to burial mounds and the remains of ancient structures. Those archaeological sites developed a reputation for being gateways to a mysterious Fae underworld, which served as the inspiration for the subterranean kingdom of Mistei. Combining that dramatic setting and the tricky nature of the Fae in fairy tales led to the complicated politics and power struggles explored in SERVANT OF EARTH and PRINCESS OF BLOOD.
Princess of the Blood explores such heavy themes as trauma, healing, betrayal, murder, and forging new alliances. How did you approach exploring such difficult and emotionally compelling but difficult subjects in your writing? And how did you react emotionally when writing about such things?
Fantasy novels are a great way to explore dark themes that are relevant to our lives. The fantastical setting adds an element of distance while also allowing for very high stakes. It can be difficult to write such heavy content (I feel bad for my characters sometimes!) and I definitely cried while writing certain passages, but I also think it’s a wonderful way to explore themes of healing and growth. I spend a lot of time thinking about how my characters’ emotions and traumas would impact their actions and how they might change over the course of the story.
How did your background in archaeology shape the historical textures and power dynamics in your fantasy world? After all there were a lot of complex, traumatic and emotional plot lines in ancient times as well as diverse architecture.
My background in archaeology definitely impacts my worldbuilding. I’m always thinking about how a society is laid out, from its geography to its social hierarchy, as well as how the characters move through that space. How do they dress and act to signify their status as an insider or outsider? What are the rituals of everyday life? I also like to consider how my characters relate to their own world’s past—their history and myths and the combination of fact, fiction, and propaganda that impacts their beliefs. Their politics and actions are shaped by the stories they tell themselves, just as ours are. I always want the reader to have a sense of an expansive world where countless stories are happening just off the page.
Is there a particular scene or line in “Princess of the Blood” that holds special meaning for you either personally or as an author?
There are a lot of scenes and lines that hold meaning for me, but one passage sums up the central theme of this book and series, which is the cyclical nature of history and the importance of trying to break destructive cycles even if the fight seems hopeless:
“History ate itself like a snake swallowing its own tail as the Fae continued their unending battle for power . . . but that didn’t mean we should give up. Even if our victories had a steep price. Even if we lost.“
Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?
I’m so excited that readers are discovering SERVANT OF EARTH and PRINCESS OF BLOOD! It’s been thrilling and fulfilling to see Kenna’s story resonating with so many people. Thank you to everyone who has picked these books up.
When can we expect the third and final book?
I don’t have an exact publication date yet, but it will be coming in 2026!
Florence Grimes is a mess. Once part of a popular girl rock band, after a brief interlude with the manager who is really in love with another of the women in the group, she’s cast out and left with a baby to raise courtesy of the man who fired her. Sure, he pays for their son to go to a posh private school, and she adores her child, but her royalty checks are dwindling and let’s face it—she shouldn’t be spending what little money she has left on fancy nail art and other unnecessary items.
But then Flo isn’t someone who knows how to manage her life, She just doesn’t fit in with the other mothers, but then she doesn’t try that hard—her clothing and attitude impairing her ability to be accepted.
Finally, there’s hope. She gets a call about meeting an old colleague and she dreams of returning to the stage, but, as always with Flo, bad stuff happens and this time it’s really bad. Her son’s class bully mysteriously vanishes on a field trip, and Florence’s quirky, misunderstood 10-year-old son becomes a suspect.
“To save her son, Florence has to figure out what actually happened to the missing boy,” says Sarah Harman, author of All the Other Mother’s Hate Me (G. P. Putnam’ & Sons 2025). “But the more she uncovers, the more she realizes her son might not be as innocent as she’d like to believe,”
Books about missing children and women on the rocks aren’t typically funny but Harman, who describes the subject as a “fine line to walk” uses humor in recounting Flo and her attempts not only to resuscitate her career—and her life—but find out what really happened. And Flo, despite all her faults and mishaps, is someone to root for.
“Personally, as a parent, I have zero interest in fiction about bad things happening to children,” says Harman. “There’s enough of that in the real world; I do not want to consume that darkness in my limited free time. So, it was important to me to telegraph to the reader from the outset, that while this is a twisty mystery about a missing boy, this is not a book where children are going to suffer.”
Harman was never in a girl band (that’s what they called them back then) but she was inspired to write the novel by thinking back to the early aughts and the way that female celebrities were treated by the media and society in general. She references Britney Spears as one example.
“Or remember how the paparazzi took a horrible upskirt photo of Anne Hathaway and then Matt Lauer asked her on national television ‘what lesson she learned from the experience?’” she says. “That was in 2012. It really wasn’t very long ago. When I was writing Florence, I was thinking about how coming of age creatively in that sort of environment might shape a person’s worldview —and the rest of her life.”
The book, which came out in March of this year, is so compelling that even before publication, foreign rights to it were sold at auction in 14 markets and the TV rights bought by FX and The Bear creator Chris Storer, Not bad at all for any novel, but this is Harman’s first which makes it even more impressive.
Like Flo, Harman is an American living in the West End of London, and she notes that navigating the class system is much different than here. But there are some things that are common worldwide and one of them, she says, the redemptive power of female friendship.
“When we meet Florence, all the other mothers hate her—and for a good reason,” she says. “She’s kind of awful. Over the course of the novel, as Florence forges an unlikely alliance with another mom, Jenny, she discovers that she actually is capable of caring about something other than herself. It’s only by learning to be a friend that Florence is able to move on from her past and forgive herself for her failures. Ultimately, my hope is that this book makes readers feel it’s never too late for a comeback.”
Mesmerizing, atmospheric, Gothic, and lyrical, Isabella Valeri’s first novel in a trilogy, took me into an opaque and lawless world of ancestral and deadly family dynasties beholden to no nation and no one but themselves. Valeri, who writes and lives under an assumed name and in an undisclosed Alpine location, is described as an avid markswoman, skier, equestrian, and pilot. I had the chance to interview her as she was writing the upcoming sequel, The Prodigal Daughter due out July 7, 2026.
Q. What inspired you to write Letters from the Dead (Atria/Emily Bestler Books/Simon & Schuster)and explore the world of old European dynasties and how much impact they have on the world?
A. I had rather an unusual childhood and when I was quite young I read The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival a work written by the British military officer Sir John Glubb. Glubb describes a set of phases that empires go through during their rise and decline.
I was also fascinated by the “Course of Empire” series of paintings by Thomas Cole, and I remember being saddened by the fifth and last in the series “Desolation” that Cole himself describes thus: “The gorgeous pageant has passed – the roar of battle has ceased – the multitude has sunk in the dust – the empire is extinct.”
But dynasties, particularly the hereditary variety, I realised, can outlast empires. The Yamato Imperial House of Japan endured for more than 2,500 years. This made me wonder what sort of properties permitted dynasties to endure for so long.
When I began to write Letters from the Dead, it seemed the perfect theme for my young anti-heroine to explore: the way that dynasties subsume their members, and inevitably corrupt them so that the dynasty itself can survive. How does one fight such an entity, particularly as the youngest and the only girl of a generation?
I won’t spoil it, but I hope that the Letters from the Dead series answers that question.
Q. Did any real-life families or historical events influence the creation of the protagonist’s family and their legacy? Or is some or all of it based upon your own experiences?
A. Certainly the House of Hapsburg and its fate after the First World War provided some inspiration. Their influence was of such concern that the “Hapsburg Law” of 1919 stripped the family of power, seized all its property, and banished its memebers from Austria unless they renounced all their titles and claims.
Some refused and went into exile. In fact, the Imperial family was later deported from Switzerland when the authorities discovered that Charles I was, for the second time, trying to mount a coup, restore the monarchy to power, and install himself on the Hungarian throne.
The Russian Imperial Romanov family in early years. Wikimedia Commons.
The fate of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine (and the murder of the Russian Imperial Romanov family at the hands of the Bolsheviks a year earlier) certainly provided an incentive for dynastic families to adopt rather a lower profile. Concepts like exile and secret power structures and the clandestine machinations they wield are certainly rich ground for an author to mine, and so themes like secret societies, banking secrecy, and the goings on in shadowy halls of power play central roles in Letters from the Dead and the rest of the series.
Q. The Alpine estate feels almost like a character itself. How did you create such a vivid and atmospheric setting? And did the remote estate mpact the people who live there?
A. I worked very hard to imbue my prose with that feeling I’m very glad to know that this comes through in the book. In a way, the dynasty that my anti-heroine is born into is a living, breathing thing. It has wants, needs, and desires. What are the dynasty’s ancestral lands and the “family seat,” the centre of the family’s power, but the physical manifestations of the dynasty itself?
Photo courtesy of Isabella Valeri.
Certainly my anti-heroine, who knows nothing of the outside world for the first twelve years of her life, finds herself born as part of that ecosystem. There’s always a hint of the supernatural in my books and the suggestion that the family’s ancestors do their best to wield their influence from beyond the grave.
This concept was a fairly central tenant of belief in Ancient Rome and the title Letters from the Dead certainly alludes to the influence of “those who have gone before.” The estate is their only connection with the living so it does take on life of its own now and again, and for good or for ill, has a seductive influence over everyone who walks on those lands.
Photo courtesy of Switzerland Tourism
Of course, it helps that the Alpine foothills and the High Alps, where large portions of my books are set, are breathtakingly beautiful. My writing retreat is far up in the mountains and the descriptions of the hills, valleys, fogs, mists, and clouds on the estate were some of the first passages I wrote while looking down from there.
Q. I loved how you meshed the intellectual with a high-paced thriller.Was that difficult to do?
A. It was, in fact, very, very difficult. Early on I was repeatedly warned that it was nearly impossible to publish longer books. I am beyond grateful that Emily Bestler, my publisher, proved that untrue.
I think and hope that longer form fiction is making a comeback and that even younger readers have tired of the quick dopamine fix of social media. I set out to write the books I wanted to read and almost all my favourites are longer works shot through with texture and detail and with very intellectual themes. Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, perhaps my very favourite novel and a huge inspiration for me, is nearly 200,000 words.
Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, an absolutely beautiful book, is longer than that. A.S. Byatt’s wonderful Possession is also nearly 200,000 words.
Wikimedia Commons
I think it’s hard to fully appreciate The Secret History unless you understand quite a bit about Dionysus and the Eleusinian Mysteries. But Tartt gives that to her readers in rather a clever way by bringing them along for her main character’s lessons where those concepts are discussed.
There are so many deeper themes in Letters from the Dead that I also felt as if I needed to show my readers how my anti-heroine uncovers them, and how, at a young age, she develops the skills and tools she needs to embrace her destiny.
Moreover, I cannot abide the tendency of female characters to devolve into “Mary Sue”s, young women who apparently sprung from the womb as already accomplished international jewel thieves with incredible gymnastic abilities and an innate immunity to cyanide (that conveniently saves their life in the middle of Act II).
To me it was very important to let my readers learn how my anti-heroine acquires what she needs to follow her character arc, and maybe even to learn along with her.
You can’t fight an old world dynasty, after all, unless you understand something about trusts and estates law. I’m still not sure that I struck the right balance between the intellectual concepts in the book and the pace of the story, but I’m told that all authors fret about such things even well after publication.
Q. Without spoilers, what was the most difficult plot twist or revelation to write?
A. The dynasty my anti-heroine is born into obviously uses violence, even murder, to its own ends. But, such a structure would not survive long if such acts were perpetrated in the open.
So, much of the violence in Letters from the Dead occurs “off-camera” so to speak, hidden in the shadows, hinted at in ways that cause my anti-heroine to speculate, even if she cannot be sure what is and isn’t true. There is one plot twist, however, that sparks a terrible act of violence that has horrible and long-lasting consequences and one that I knew that, as an author, I could not shy away from.
That was a very difficult scene to write because elements of it were deeply personal to me. I also knew that this scene would be critical not just to Letters from the Dead, but the whole series and therefore it had to hit a certain tone perfectly.
I revisited and revised the scene maybe a dozen times which was deeply traumatic and prose quickly became so visceral that even to this day the scene upsets me. But, I really felt that I had to inflict that pain on myself and to really pour that agony into the passage or I would always feel like I had cheated my readers somehow.
Q. Did you always know how the story would end, or did it evolve as you wrote?
A. I started off as a “pantser,” a writer who writes by the seat of her pants, but a very unusual thing happened to me that turned me into a devoted “plotter,” committed to mapping out the entire work in advance.
I was amazingly lucky to be hosted by director David Leitch and his wife and producer Kelly McCormick at the famous Shepperton Studios in Surrey, England. One of my favourite movies of all time, Alien, was filmed there.
They were astoundingly gracious with me even though they were busy filming Hobbs & Shaw at the time and I got a complete tour of the shoot. What really stuck with me was the “war room” where they had just taken over a whole conference room and laid out the entire film on every surface with photos, magazine cutouts for costume concepts, and detailed dioramas of sets.
You could sit in a swivel chair in the middle and spin around and see the entire concept of film unfold. I was so taken by that idea that the moment I got home I turned one of the conference rooms in my own offices into the “war room” for Letters from the Dead.
Before I was done I had covered the walls with detailed scene-level timelines of every book in the series complete with full-colour pictures of the characters, settings, key events. Some of the timelines four feet tall and twenty feet long. So, yes. All the way at the end of the timeline for the last book the last scenes in the series are depicted (and readers will finally learn her name).
Q. Your life sounds almost as mysterious-and maybe as fraught with danger– as the lives of those in the book. Do you have any comments about that?
A. I have a friend who likes to speculate that I’m a “retired Bond girl” and that my writing retreat in the Alps is a “Bond villian’s lair” obviously references to the old James Bond movies. I always jest back with her and say: “Who’s retired?” Certainly, I’ve had an unusual life, but I don’t want that to distract from my books and I think there is something at least mildly distasteful about the post-modern urge to make “the messenger,” so to speak, so much of the “story.”
Jack Carr has a wonderful discussion about such things in the preface of his debut novel The Terminal List. Of the book’s main character he writes: “I am not James Reece. He is more skilled, witty and intelligent than I could ever hope to be. Though I am not James Reece, I understand him.”
Similarly, I am not my anti-heroine. But I certainly understand her. Of course, Jack Carr has a good reason to write that disclaimer: he was a Navy SEAL and many of his missions were classified. There is an element of “write what you know” in my novels, as there must be. Thankfully, however, my life is quite a bit less exciting than Jack Carr’s.
Q. Letters from the Dead is the first in a series. Can you give us any hints about what’s to come in The Prodigal Daughter?
A. Gillian Flynn, the author of Gone Girl, wrote some comments about female main characters that always resonated with me to the effect that many of them are boring. Of course, her own female characters can be downright evil and I think that’s a refreshing change from books with those happy endings where the female protagonist ends up with the man of her dreams just as he inherits the winery in France and they live together happily ever after (and in such cases the author has clearly not realised how much work a vineyard is).
It is one reason that I write anti-heroines instead of female protagonists. One of the major themes in the Letters from the Dead series is the conflict between freedom and duty or loyalty.
The Prodigal Daughter is about a return from exile, discovering the dark plans the dynasty she was born into has in store for my anti-heroine, and the trials she must, at the greatest personal cost, go through first to understand what her destiny is, and eventually realise it. In Letters from the Dead her grandfather tells her: “My dear, sometimes the patriarch must embrace total amorality, even immorality, in order to grant to his family the luxury of morality.”
In The Prodigal Daughter she must come to terms with the true implications of that advice, and what it will take to either accept or reject it.
Q. Besides a great read, what else would you like readers to take away from your book?
A. Another major theme in Letters from the Dead is secrecy and hidden worlds. I hope that my readers will be inspired by the book to look into the shadows they are normally discouraged from investigating. Letters from the Dead is also a coming of age story focused on the youngest sibling and the only girl of her generation and the non-traditional things she becomes interested in that shape her destiny in unexpected ways.
I would love someday to hear that the novel inspired a young woman to investigate forbidden mysteries and undertake strange and unusual pursuits that opened up new worlds for her (though hopefully not by angering a powerful and potentially murderous dynasty along the way).
The youngest of five children with a father who was jokester and a mother who did impressions, Sidney Karger learned early that being funny garnered attention from his parents.
It also instilled in him a sense of comedic timing coupled with an obsession with both “Comedy Central” and “Saturday Night Live” as well as director John Hughes who directed several movies in Karger’s hometown of Highland Park, Illinois including “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” “Risky Business” and “Sixteen Candles.”
“He was my god,” says Karger, who knowing that Hughes had been a copywriter for an advertising firm studied advertising at Michigan State University. He was successful as a copywriter but didn’t find the work fulfilling.
“It didn’t fill my comedy writing needs,” says Karger, who around that time was offered a job writing for “Comedy Central ” and was unsure of what to do. “I remember standing on a street corner, talking to family, asking do I want to go with an advertising job or “Comedy Central.” It’s pretty amazing when you think of it.”
Karger chose “Comedy Central” and also was a contributing writer to “Saturday Night Live.”
Working for “Comedy Central” was amazing, says Karger, describing the job as “great fun and like working with family.”
With his success,Karger, an award-winning screenwriter for film and television, has now branched out with a romantic comedy (or rom-com as they’re known) titled “Best Men” (Penguin-Random House). The story is about Max, a gay guy struggling with his failing romance, and Paige, his best friend since childhood. Now engaged, Paige is having her usual second and third thoughts and Max, who is Paige’s man of honor and her soon-to-be husband’s younger brother and best man work together to keep the marriage on track. And, of course, fall in love.
The novel, a New York-centric look at love, friendships, finding yourself and realizing your potential, is full of witty conversations and observations. It’s warm, inviting and laugh-out loud funny at times as well. It’s received lot of glowing reviews and was featured as “most anticipated” and made suggested reading lists from Goodreads, BuzzFeed, BookRiot, and LGBTQ Reads.
“Max and Paige’s friendship is ultimately the star of the show, and readers will find their banter reminiscent of fan favorites like Amy Poehler and Tina Fey or Dan Levy and Annie Murphy. A charming debut filled with cocktails, chocolate and comedy,” wrote Kirkus Review, while Anderson Cooper, #1 New York Times bestselling author and journalist, describes the book as “Bursting with laughs and so much love, Sidney Karger’s debut novel delivers a truly refreshing spin on the romantic comedy. It’s full of funny, flawed and poignant characters, set in the dreamy, sharply-observed New York City that we love. ‘Best Men’ is a big-hearted, feel-good summer escape.”
And though Karger recenlty released his second novel, “The Bump, ” he still is writing screenplays as well as doing rewrites of scripts. It’s a good balance.
“I always wanted to be a screenwriter and comedian when I was in college,” says Karger about his career path. “So I decided to write smaller like about Highland Park.”
His script made the coveted Black List, Hollywood’s shortlist of the most liked screenplays, and he started getting numerous writing assignments.
Now, he’s able to write across several mediums and have fun doing it.
In 1956, there were baby dolls for little girls to play with but the idea of an eleven-and-a-half-inch tall grown women with feet permanently arched to wear high heels was a totally alien concept to the men at Mattel when Ruth Handler presented the idea for Barbie.
Because the times were more “Mad Men” than they are now, there were derogatory comments about the doll’s hourglass figure along with dismayed looks that Handler, a take-no prisoners type when she had an idea, would even suggest Mattel should consider making this doll.
“She looks like a hooker,” one of the men said.
Well, we know how this turned out. According to recent statistics, three Barbie dolls are sold every second, totaling about one billion dolls having sold since Barbie was introduced in 1959.
How this all came to be is the delightful tale told by bestselling Chicago author Renee Rosen in her latest novel, titled simply “Let’s Call Her Barbie” (Berkley January 2025), reinforcing Mattel’s estimation that Barbie has 99% worldwide brand reorganization.
“I’ve never had more fun writing a novel,” Rosen told me recently in a phone interview. “I wanted to do this long before the “Barbie” movie came out.”
Learning the story behind the creation of Barbie while participating on a panel of feminism in 2019, Rosen knew this was the perfect novel and subject for her. She specializes in writing novels about important figures such as Helen Gurley Brown who changed the magazine world as editor of Cosmopolitan magazine in “Park Avenue Summer,” the long term love affair of the founder of Marshal Field’s in “What the Lady Wants,” and the feud between two super rich women, Mrs. Astor and Mrs. Vanderbilt, vying for social status supremacy in “The Social Graces.”
Writing about Barbie would have to wait. Rosen already had two books in the pipeline that she needed to complete. But once she had the time—and the book contract—in her typical way she hit the ground running. A deep dive into the world of Barbie led her to meet Barbie influences (yes, there are Barbie influences including one who has over half-a-million followers) and took her to a Barbie collectors convention in Chicago.
“I was lucky to get in, admission was almost sold out,” she says.
There she met 90-year-old Carol Spencer, one of the original Barbie designers.
“She’s Mattel royalty,” says Rosen who wishes she could have been a fly on the wall when Handler was taking on Mattel in trying to persuade them to spend the big bucks it would take to develop Barbie.
As for Barbie’s figure, Rosen tells me her shape, which was somewhat scandalous in the late 1950s, was necessary so her clothes would fit.
“Barbie is a 1/6th scale of a real woman but there’s no such thing as 1/6th scale fabric so in order to make waistbands with zippers, hooks and eyes– all that detail adds bulk,” explains Rosen. “So, if Barbie didn’t have an abnormally slender waist, which is the equivalent of an 18-inch waist on a woman, her waist would have been bigger than her hips when she was dressed.”
I told you; she dives deep.
It got to the point where she unearthed her own collection of Barbies and displayed them in the home she shares with her partner, John, who though he’s a finance guy, was willing to put on a pink shirt for the Barbie convention. It should be pointed out though that John might not be totally cool about the display of Barbies.
I did a quick check on how in sync Rosen and I are when to comes to Barbies by asking her what her favorite Barbie outfit is. She replies “probably “Solo in the Spotlight.” That’s Barbie as a chanteuse dressed in a black skintight floor length gown with a flared ruffled bottom and a microphone.
“Mine too,” I say. “I wanted that one so badly.”
And then I mention my sad story of woe. My mother, the librarian, insisted on making outfits for my Barbie so my doll never got to wear that sparkly sleepless dress. I don’t know what they cost at the time, but there’s one for sale on eBay for $500.
“Barbie is the most collected toy after baseball cards,” Rosen tells me which explains the cost.
And, of course, there was the movie which so far has earned $1.446 billion globally.
There was a time when the name Barbie was used as pejorative and dismissed as a shallow and anti-feminist throwback. Poor Ken was frowned upon too when people would dismiss a couple by saying “they look like Barbie and Ken.”
But really this is a woman’s story. Handler worked in a mostly male world at a time when there were plenty of toys for boys to play with and baby dolls that needed burping and diaper changes for girls. She transformed all that, making it a Barbie world.
Rosen’s book takes us back to that time and shows us how it happened.
In 1832, at the height of the Georgia gold rush, gold had been discovered on the banks of the Etowah River on land owned by Alfred Minette. As men flocked to work in the mine and others to supply their needs, a small town arose and Minette named it after his firstborn, a beautiful but frail girl named Juliana who had died years ago in South Carolina.
But now the Civil War was waging and while the men and boys of Juliana were off fighting, Minette forced their wives and children to work in the mines.
Union General Philip Sheridan and his troops were laying waste to all he passed through on his march to the sea and Juliana lay in his path. Destroying the town meant destroying the wealth that helped fuel the Confederate war effort and so three of the town elders, including Minette, formed a plan to save it.
And it worked. Sheridan did stop in Juliana and he and his men decimated the town’s food and livestock supplies but they didn’t discover the mine, nor the women and children trapped in the bottom of the mine when the town’s elders had the entrance dynamited with explosives. Sheridan and his troops tarried and by the time the mine was unsealed, all those insides were dead. When the surviving men returned home from the war, they were told their families had been sent away and they could now work in the lumber mill Minette was building, accept it as God’s will that their families were gone, and start anew.
It was a small sacrifice for the good of all, Minette argued, and that his daughter, Julianna, was pleased with their offering.
More than 160 years later, Billie Hope receives an offer. A former restaurateur, Billie lives in a cramped apartment with her husband and daughter in New York City when she receives an offer to purchase a dream home in historic Juliana for just $100. The offer describes the town as idyllic, and the accompanying photo shows a quaint town square straight out of a storybook as does the link to the professionally done town website. Billie sees it as part of a trend to lure people to help grow stagnant towns with new citizens. Feeling at a dead end in her life and lured by the thought of a pretty house in a lovely small town, she replies.
It’s an offer too good to be true, but desperation often clouds people’s judgment, so it is with Billie and her family who make the move to Juliana.
“A small town,” she thinks. “Our own house. A perfect childhood for Mere and…another restaurant for me.”
Of course, it doesn’t work out that way.
Bestselling author Emily Carpenter, whose other suspense novels include Burying the Honeysuckle Girls and The Weight of Lies, weaves a frightening and compelling tale as we follow Billie and her family move from elation at what they see as a chance for a new and better life and the dawning realization that they may have embarked upon a dangerous and frightening adventure.
An archaeologist who has excavated a Bronze Age palace in Turkey, a medieval Abbey in England, and an Inca site in Chile, Sarah Hawley has created an extensive underground world where fairies abide.
But if you’re thinking Tinkerbell, who sweetly waves her magic wand, think again. The fairies in Hawley’s novel “Servant of Earth,” the first in a trilogy titled “The Shards of Magic,” are amazingly beautiful and as decadent as any French court in the 17th or 18th centuries. Given numerous love affairs, intrigues and pettiness, they’re ruled by a tyrant king who has a penchant for mayhem and murder.
Into this world stumbles Kenna, a human from a nearby village who lives with her single mother, keeps mostly to herself to avoid the jeers of others with one exception– Anya, a pretty villager who has befriended her. When Anya is chosen as one of the women who will travel to the land of the Fae, a perilous trip through bogs and deep dark woods, she accompanies her. But Anya disappears as they make their way, and it is Kenna who arrives at the fairy court, helped by the mysterious dagger she discovered in one of her forays in the forest.
The King orders her dead, but one of his underlings suggests a different fate. Why not make her a handmaiden to Lara, the daughter of Princess Oriana, head of the Earth House in the fairy kingdom?
It is clearly an insult to Princess and her daughter. A human as a handmaiden. But it is impossible to say no. And Kenna, who is very curious and kind, soon learns her way among the many houses and those that rule them. In doing so, she is able to help Lara, who, to become an immortal fairy, must undergo six rigorous and often deadly tasks along with others who are vying for the honor.
Hawley, who also taught archaeology, takes us into a fascinating subterranean world, one where the fairies live in luxurious surroundings, dine on the best food, and busy themselves with endless affairs, alliances and games as their lives unwind in front of them for eternity.
Kenna embarks upon a romantic liaison with one of the fairy princes, but she also befriends the serving women who have been cast out of the brothel where the king likes to spend much of his time. Each of the worlds she connects with pulls her deeper into the dangers of being discovered as a spy, someone who is siding with a brewing rebellion.
But she has a moral compass compelling her to go forward in aiding the revolt against the current regime. At the same time, she is helping Lara accomplish her tasks, though it’s forbidden to do so.
There is danger on all sides and Kenna becomes more and more unsure of who she can trust, including her fairy prince. Spoiler alert: He is no Prince Charming.
“Working as an archaeologist made me think about the details of this world and of the past, and that extends into fantasy worlds where you think about how people are dressing and what it looks like and the political structure and all of that,” said Hawley, explaining how she created the fairy kingdom and all the factions and their interactions. “But it’s also thinking about these characters, their identities, and the stories they tell themselves about their past, because as much as I’m telling the mythology of this world, the characters see the mythology of their own world in a slightly different way.”
Hawley, who is the author of several other books, including “A Witch’s Guide to Fake Dating a Demon” and “A Demon’s Guide to Wooing a Witch,” brings a historic perspective to her tales of a fairy kingdom as well.
“There’s actually very dark stuff about how fairies behave,” she said, recounting a Celtic story about people who play fiddle music for the fairies for a single night, are rewarded with gold, and sent home. “Upon returning to their villages, they find that the gold has turned into leaves. And they realize that hundreds of years have passed since they’d been gone and everyone they love is dead, and then they immediately die.”
Luckily, if you like happy endings, “Servant of Earth” ends on a positive note, though one where we realize that Kenna has many more challenges ahead.
But she’s a tough, wily hero. And so, it’s just a matter of waiting for the next book in the trilogy to come out next year.
Shelf Life 