In a country divided between humans and witchers, Venus Stoneheart hustles as a brewer making illegal love potions to support her family.
THE POISONS WE DRINK
by Bethany Baptiste
Sourcebooks Fire, April 2024
(via Writers House)
Love potions is a dangerous business. Brewing has painful, debilitating side effects, and getting caught means death or a prison sentence. But what Venus is most afraid of is the dark, sentient magic within her.
Then an enemy’s iron bullet kills her mother, Venus’s life implodes. Keeping her reckless little sister Janus safe is now her responsibility. When the powerful Grand Witcher, the ruthless head of her coven, offers Venus the chance to punish her mother’s killer, she has to pay a steep price for revenge. The cost? Brew poisonous potions to enslave D.C.’s most influential politicians. As Venus crawls deeper into the corrupt underbelly of her city, the line between magic and power blurs, and it’s hard to tell who to trust. . . Herself included.
THE POISONS WE DRINK is a potent YA debut about a world where love potions are weaponized against hate and prejudice, sisterhood is unbreakable, and self-love is life and death.
Bethany Baptiste is an inner-city educator by day and a young adult SFF novelist by night. If she’s not writing a lesson plan or a story, she does retail therapy in Florida bookstores and takes scheduled naps with her three chaotic evil dogs.
Nothing has been the same for fourteen-year-old Dolores Mendoza since everything started changing at the end of middle school. Newly diagnosed with interstitial cystitis, Dolores had a humiliating accident in class that earned her the nickname “whiz kid.” Even worse, she’s losing her lifelong BFF, Shae, who’s suddenly ignoring Dolores to hang out with the cool girls. Dolores is alone, and confused. What did she do wrong?
Magic needs a spark.
Ross Maloy just wants to be a normal seventh grader. He doesn’t want to lose his hair, or wear a weird hat, or deal with the disappearing friends who don’t know what to say to « the cancer kid. » But with his recent diagnosis of a rare eye cancer, blending in is off the table.
Laura Rodriguez has a plan: No matter what the grown-ups say, she will live with her parents again. Can you blame her? It’s tough to make friends as the new kid at school. And while staying at her aunt’s house is okay, it just isn’t the same. But that’s all going to change. Because when Laura finds a puppy, it seems like fate. If she can train the puppy to become a therapy dog, then maybe she’ll be allowed to visit her parents. Maybe the dog will help them get better, and things will finally go back to the way they should. After all, how do you explain to others that you’re technically a foster kid, even when you live with your aunt? Most of all . . . how do you explain that you’re not where you belong, and you just want to go home?