Do you remember reading fairytales about kings and queens—realms filled with colorful stories of mythical creatures and adventures far from ordinary? Now, imagine if those fairytales were true and your grandmother was once a queen.

ONCE A QUEEN
by Sarah Arthur
WaterBrook, January 2024

Welcome to fourteen-year old Eva Joyce’s world. In 1995, Eva and her mother spend the summer in England with her estranged grandmother. Upon arriving to her grandmother’s mysterious manor, Eva begins to unravel secrets lurking around the gardens and manor – some seemingly connected to the fairytales Eva’s mother use to tell her before bedtime.

She quickly learns she is not the only one who knows the stories of Terival and Mesterra. The groundskeeper and his grandson, Frankie, believe the stories that she thought were only fairytales are real. Eva is skeptical at first, until one night she unexplainably sees a woman and a white stag roaming the foggy gardens just below her bedroom window.

Could the fairytales really be true? Do portals to other worlds exist?

With Frankie’s help, Eva sets out to uncover the truth about her grandmother’s past and the magical realms around them, all while wrestling with the grief of a vanishing childhood—and the fear that growing up means giving up fairy tales forever.

Book 2 coming Spring 2025

Book 3 coming Spring 2026

Sarah Arthur is a fun-loving speaker and the author of a dozen books for teens and adults, including the bestselling Walking with Frodo: A Devotional Journey through The Lord of the Rings. She serves as preliminary fiction judge for the CT Book Awards, was a founding board member of the annual C. S. Lewis Festival in Northern Michigan, and codirects the Madeleine L’Engle Writing Retreats.