Perfect for fans of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline and Sarah Henning’s Sea Witch, this standalone YA fantasy is a spooky, chilling read that explores grief and loss that follows a teen girl who must fight dangerous fae and ancient gods to break a family curse.
BEYOND THE HAWTHORNE TREE
by Catelyn Wilson
Catelyn Wilson Publishing, August 2022
(via JABberwocky Literary Agency)
Cassie Murdoch is haunted by the black-eyed woman that killed her mother. For her mental health, Cassie is sent away to live with her estranged grandmother on Tide Island. While there, Cassie searches for clues to her mother’s old life and why she fled her home never to return. With help from her grandmother’s secretive errand boy, Henry, Cassie unravels a terrible family secret: a curse that spans generations.
Henry and Cassie follow a series of clues left by her ancestors to find that Tide Island is a dangerous place, the link to a mysterious realm called the Otherworld where the black-eyed woman rules. After learning she is descended from a long line of sea witches, Cassie is plunged into a world of spells and secret ceremonies. Desperate to save herself and her newfound friends from her spiraling control, Cassie searches for a way to break her curse. But in the Otherworld enemies are not as they seem, and Cassie must find whom to trust before those she loves most are lost at the hands of the black-eyed woman.
Catelyn Wilson writes YA Fantasy with a splash of romance. She loves incorporating mythology into her books and firmly believes morally grey is the way to any woman’s heart. She has an unhealthy obsession with Jane Austen, sunscreen, and animals. Catelyn lives in Texas with her husband and mini-Aussie, Churro.
It’s 1999 in Southeast Texas and the Evans women, owners of the only funeral parlor in town, are keeping steady with…normal business. The dead die. You bury them. End of story. That’s how Ducey Evans has done it for the last eighty years, and her progeny—Lenore the experimenter and Grace, Lenore’s soft-hearted daughter—have run Evans Funeral Parlor for the last fifteen years without drama. Ever since That Godawful Mess that left two bodies in the ground and Grace raising her infant daughter, Luna, alone. But when town gossip Mina Jean Murphy’s body is brought in for a regular burial and she rises from the dead instead, it’s clear that the Strigoi—the original vampire—are back. And the Evans women are the ones who need to fight back to protect their town. As more folks in town turn up dead, and Deputy Roger Taylor begins asking way too many questions, Ducey, Lenore, Grace, and now Luna, must take up their blades and figure out who is behind the Strigoi’s return. As the saying goes, what rises up, must go back down. But as unspoken secrets and revelations spill from the past into the present, the Evans family must face that sometimes the dead aren’t the only things you want to keep buried. A crackling mystery-horror novel with big-hearted characters and blood-soaked Southern charm, Bless Your Heart is a gasp-worthy delight from start to finish.
Iggy Guerra is out of prison, but his homecoming is anything but smooth. His beloved mother is gone, his grief-stricken father, Armando, is deep in debt, and they are about to lose the butcher shop that has been in their family for generations. Iggy must earn his father’s lost trust in order to save La Carnicería Guerra from the threats imposed by a new rival business, a vigilante activist, and big-game hunter Orin, who has dragged Armando into his dangerous money-making schemes deep in the Everglades, where more than secrets are buried. Iggy will wrestle with the beauty and the danger of the place he calls home as he tries to save his family—without losing himself forever. Sharp as a butcher knife gleaming in the Miami sun, Alejandro Nodarse’s BLOOD IN THE CUT opens onto a deeply personal vision of the streets and swamps of Miami, where the roots are crooked but strong as mangroves.
EXACTLY codifies twenty-five years of insight into one of the most critical and yet overlooked interpersonal skills: the ability to deeply understand others while also being deeply understood. Greg McKeown draws on a range of real-world examples as well as research in psychology and neuroscience to offer strategies and tips showing how to achieve mutual understanding with just about anyone — and in turn cast aside disagreements and differences, enjoy richer and more productive relationships, and wield greater power and influence.