Two sisters find themselves at odds in this breathtaking historical fantasy —and when one releases a dark spell, someone will have to burn. They are witches, after all.
THE WITCHES AT THE END OF THE WORLD
by Chelsea Iversen
Sourcebooks Landmark, October 2023
Minna and Kaija live deep in the birch woods of northern Norway, hiding in the shadows since their mother was burned at the stake thirteen years ago. Sweet-tempered Kaija remembers life before the fire—the friendships, the comfort and warmth of community. Her magic is quiet, mostly charms to heal cuts and bruises. She’d happily give it up to have a normal life. Minna, though, was raised in smoke. She’s a witch through and through: full of power and unafraid of it, wrath always simmering just below the surface. When Kaija decides to return to the village where their mother died to make a new life for herself, Minna, in a rage, releases a curse to raze the community that’s taken everything from her. In doing so, she sets in motion a plot that could destroy Kaija and the new life she’s trying to build. But you can’t take back dark magic once it’s been released, and someone will have to burn. They are witches, after all.
Chelsea Iversen lives with her husband and dog in Colorado, where she reads her runes at every full moon. This is her debut novel.
“Chelsea Iversen’s magical debut is a story for the ages.” –Adriana Trigiani, author of The Good Left Undone.
Magic is fading from Wales—choked off by King Offa’s Dyke, the enemy earthworks that spans the entire border. Even the dragons have disappeared. And now an attack is imminent.
Set in a not-too-distant America, I CHEERFULLY REFUSE is the tale of a bereaved musician setting sail across a sentient Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved, bookselling wife. Rainy, an endearing bear of an Orphean narrator, seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs and remote islands of the inland sea. Encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, Rainy finds on land an illiterate and increasingly desperate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, crumbled infrastructure, and a lawless society. Amidst the Swiftean challenges of life at sea and no safe landings, Rainy is lifted by the beauty around him, surprising humor, generous strangers, and an unexpected companion in a young girl who comes aboard. And as his innate guileless nature begins to make an inadvertent rebel of him, Rainy’s private quest for the love of his life grows into something wider and wilder, sweeping up friends and foes alike in his strengthening wake.
BEARTOOTH is the story of Thad and Hazen, two brothers from Yellowstone country. Fatherless, abandoned by their mother, and tired of eking out a livelihood poaching bears and chopping firewood, they reluctantly agree to help a mysterious, kilt-wearing Scotsman smuggle elk antlers out of the national park; it turns out rich folks building ski houses want them for chandeliers.