A sexy, romantic, feminist retelling of Dracula from the point of view of Lucy Westenra.
NOW COMES THE MIST
by Julie C. Dao
Podium, October 2024
(via Context Literary Agency)
Lucy Westenra is beautiful, rich, and admired by men. But under her sparkling, flirtatious façade, Lucy is melancholy and obsessed with death after losing her beloved father; she both fears and is captivated by death and dreads leaving her loved ones behind, especially Mina Murray, for whom Lucy cherishes an unspoken romantic attraction.
Lucy balks against the rules of upper-class society. She longs for experiences that are considered inappropriate for a respectable young lady, from traveling to indulging in her sexual curiosity and enthusiasm as men do. When she meets the sexy, mysterious Vlad, she realizes she has the chance to get everything she ever wanted. Or lose it.
Julie C. Dao is the critically acclaimed author of many books for teens and children including Forest of a Thousand Lanterns and Broken Wish. Her novels have earned starred reviews from Booklist, School Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly, won recognition as Junior Library Guild Selections and Kids’ Indie Next List picks, and landed on multiple best-ofyear lists including YALSA and the American Library Association. A proud Vietnamese- American who was born in upstate New York, she now lives in New England.
There is bad luck in New Felicity. The people of the small coastal village have taken in Milagros, an 11–year–old Venezuelan refugee, just as Trinidad’s government has begun cracking down on undocumented migrants—and now an American journalist has come to town asking questions. New Felicity’s superstitious fishermen fear the worst, certain they’ve brought bad luck on the village by killing a local witch who had herself murdered two villagers the year before. The town has been plagued since her death by alarming visits from her supernatural mother, as well as by a mysterious profusion of scarlet ibis birds. Now, skittish that the reporter’s story will bring down the wrath of the ministry of national security, the fishermen take things into their own hands. From there, we go backward and forward in time—from the town’s early days, when it was the site of a sugar plantation, to Milagros’s adulthood as she searches for her mother across the Americas. In between, through the voices of a chorus of narrators, we glimpse moments from various villagers’ lives, each one setting into motion events that will reverberate outwards across the novel and shape Milagros’s fate.
Off the coast of West Africa, decades after the dangerous rise of the Atlantic Ocean, the region’s survivors live inside five partially submerged, kilometers-high towers originally created as a playground for the wealthy. Now the towers’ most affluent rule from their lofty perch at the top while the rest are crammed into the dark, fetid floors below sea level.
A few years ago, David Alvarez had it all: a huge book deal, a loving boyfriend, and a bright writing career to look forward to. But after his second novel flops, David finds himself broke, single, lonely, and trying to come up with a brilliant idea for his third novel to turn his life around. But, good ideas aren’t easy to come by, and the mounting pressure of a near-empty bank account and the threat of eviction has left David’s creative tank on empty.