A dark, queer YA fantasy that’s perfect for fans of the Three Dark Crowns series. After Emanuela Ragno kills the one person in Occhia who can create water, she must find a way to save her city from dying of thirst.
BEYOND THE RUBY VEIL
by Mara Fitzgerald
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2020 – 2022
(via Laura Dail Literary Agency)
Book 1: BEYOND THE RUBY VEIL (October 2020)
Emanuela Ragno always gets what she wants. With her daring mind and socialite schemes, she refuses to be the demure young lady everyone wants her to be. In her most ambitious move yet, she’s about to marry Alessandro Morandi, her childhood best friend and the heir to the wealthiest house in Occhia. Emanuela doesn’t care that she and her groom are both gay, because she doesn’t want a love match. She wants power, and through Ale, she’ll have it all. But Emanuela has a secret that could shatter her plans. In the city of Occhia, the only source of water is the watercrea, a mysterious being who uses magic to make water from blood. When their first bruise-like omen appears on their skin, all Occhians must surrender themselves to the watercrea to be drained of life. Everyone throughout history has given themselves up for the greater good. Everyone except Emanuela. She’s kept the tiny omen on her hip out of sight for years. When the watercrea exposes Emanuela during her wedding ceremony and takes her to be sacrificed, Emanuela fights back … and kills her. Now Occhia has no one to make their water and no idea how to get more. In a race against time, Emanuela and Ale must travel through the mysterious, blood-red veil that surrounds their city to uncover the secrets of the watercrea’s magic and find a way to save their people — no matter what it takes.
Book 2: INTO THE MIDNIGHT VOID (January 2022)
Fans of Holly Black and Kendare Blake will obsess over the conclusion to this deliciously dark YA fantasy duology!
Emanuela has finally gotten what she’s always wanted. Since escaping her catacomb prison, she’s become the supreme ruler of everything under the veils. Finally, she has the power to throw aside senseless, old traditions and run things exactly the way they should be.
But when cracks in her magic start to show, Emanuela begrudgingly allies herself with her enemies, including her frustratingly alluring archnemesis, Verene. Together, they discover deeper truths about the mysterious blood magic Emanuela and Verene both wield. There is a higher, otherworldly authority outside the veils, and in order to save Occhia and the other realms, Emanuela may just have to rip another crown off someone’s head.
Mara Fitzgerald writes YA fantasy about unlikable female characters who ruin everything. She is a biologist by day and spends entirely too much time looking at insects under a microscope. She was born in the same state as Disney World and now lives in the same state as Dollywood, which is just as good.
SPICE ROAD
SERPENT SEA
Magnolia Moon is nine years old, likes Greek mythology, her best friend Imogen May (who understands the importance of questions like, “If you could be one fruit, any fruit, what would you be?”), wishing trees, and speaking crows. She knows instinctively that buffadillos are armadillos crossed with buffalos and believes there are walramingos living in her garden. She’s also the kind of person who can be entrusted with a great many secrets.
The law in Abai—the last known magical kingdom—does not look kindly on street thieves, but for eighteen-year-old orphan Ria, stealing isn’t a choice of convenience: it’s a matter of survival. So when she and her friend Amir devise a plan to steal priceless jewels from the kingdom’s royal palace and use them to bribe their way into a new kingdom, it seems a new life may finally be within reach. Then, while sneaking into the palace, Ria runs into the princess, and everything she knows about herself is turned on its head—because Princess Rani looks exactly like Ria, down to the freckle. Running into her doppelgänger, Princess Rani doesn’t see her long-lost twin or a dangerous, thieving intruder. She sees an opportunity: a chance to escape the tight confines of her gilded prison before her marriage, and a chance to find the wife of her late, beloved tutor, recently executed for treason, so that Rani can give her the valuable possessions he left behind. After Ria and Rani strike a deal to temporarily switch places, Rani discovers that her father’s kingdom is not the place of prosperity she once thought, and that it’s hurtling toward a dangerous war. Living with the Raja and the queen, Ria learns that they—her family?—have their own dangerous secrets, and that there’s a treasonous conspiracy brewing in the royal court. Neither life inside nor outside the palace walls are safe, and Ria and Rani are in a race against the clock to unravel a conspiracy and stop a war with wits and magic—or else allow the kingdom of Abai to sink into ruin.