The Poppy War meets The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi in this queer adult fantasy. "A high-seas adventure unlike any you've ever read. Daniels-Annachi amazes in this utterly unique take on The Little Mermaid." -Samantha R. Goode, author of Bound & BarbedFor Veshak, the sea is both his home and his battleground. He sails the open waters as a privateer, striking against those who once betrayed his homeland. But when a lost secret from Aatma’s downfall surfaces—one forged in blood and iron—he finds himself at the center of a deadly conspiracy that could change the balance of power across the world.Hunted by the forces of the Iron King, Zara’s only hope lies in an uneasy alliance with Veshak. A fierce and enigmatic being of the deep with secrets of her own, she will do anything to save those she loves and protect her family legacy.As their fates unravel and failure looms on the horizon, Veshak and Zara must decide whether to chase vengeance or trust the tides of fate to lead them toward something greater.A sweeping tale of rebellion, betrayal, and the call of the sea, A Tide of Treason is perfect for fans of high-stakes adventure and political intrigue.Please read TW/CW at www.abdanielsannachi.com

A Tide of Treason

An "atmospheric and evocative" (Rachel Gillig) romantasy debut about a threatened Siren who forges a bond with a brooding, self-righteous king in order to flee the king who raised her, for fans of One Dark Window and For the Wolf. . The monster is always slain…   Imogen Nel is in hiding. Hiding from a cruel kingdom that believes Sirens are monstrous, blood-hungry creatures. Hiding from a king and his captain who viciously hunt her kind. Hiding from her own alluring abilities. By keeping herself from the sea, Imogen’s bloodlust is dulled, and her black wings remain hidden beneath her skin.   When a neighboring king comes to visit, Imogen can no longer hide. He knows precisely what she is, and he believes she can save both their kingdoms from an even greater monster. But Imogen’s power threatens to violently reveal itself, and the two form a blood bond that protects them both. They flee the kingdom together, traversing waters teeming with the undead. As the lines between duty to their people and desire for each other begin to blur, Imogen worries her own ancestral powers may not be enough to kill what hunts her—the only way to defeat a monster may be to become one herself.

In the Veins of the Drowning (The Siren Mage, 1)

With their freedom on the line, a young woman and a rakish pirate take their fate into their own hands as they attempt to find a lost mythical isle with the power to save their entire world.Every legend has a beginning.Saoirse yearns to be powerless. Cursed from childhood with a volatile magic, she's managed to imprison it within, living under constant terror that one day it will break free. And it does, changing everything.Horrified at her loss of control, Saoirse’s parents offer her hand to the cold and ruthless Stone King. Knowing she'll never survive such a cruel man, Saoirse realizes there is only one path forward…she must break her curse. On the eve of her wedding, Saoirse seeks out the legendary Wolf of the Wild—Faolan, a feral, silver-tongued pirate. He swears to help rid her of the deadly magic if she’ll use it to locate a lost mythical isle. Crafted by the slaughtered gods, it’s the only land that could absorb her power.But Saoirse knows better than to trust a pirate’s word. With the wrath of her disgraced father and scorned betrothed chasing them, Saoirse adds one last condition to protect herself: if Faolan wants her on his ship, he'll have to marry her first."A tale rife with longing, extraordinary tenderness and delicious tension. A glorious escape for the heart and imagination."—Roshani Chokshi, New York Times bestselling author of Last Tale of the Flower Bride

Soulgazer

Fate be damned.Now imprisoned in Moros, buried deep in the Land of the Dead, Finnian is determined to right a wrong he made centuries ago. Somewhere in the hellish landscape is his father, and he intends to find him and flee their chains together.Cassian, the High God of Death and Curses, has one desire: get Finnian to confess where he’s hiding a valuable weapon—one deadly to deities.For centuries, the High Goddess of Fate has plagued Cassian over a dispute that took place between them long ago. Desperate to end her antagonizing once and for all, Cassian grants Finnian with a choice to either hand over the weapon or endure one of his curses.The Kiss of Delirium.After centuries of using necromancy, stealing the High God of Death and Curses’s souls, and playing a heated game of cat-and-mouse, Finnian knows all the ways to crawl under Cassian’s skin. Racing against the silent clock of the curse chipping away at his sanity, Finnian must figure out a way to outwit his long-standing enemy and learn the whereabouts of his father before his mind erodes entirely.However, the more their fates begin to tangle, the more old feelings ignite.Chaos is inevitable.Even in Death is the second book in the Fragile Divine, an interconnected dark fantasy romance series about the frailty of gods and goddesses. You can expect high stakes, all the emotions, a mythology-inspired world, urban settings, mental health rep, and a little horror. The series must be read in order.It is not intended for readers under 18 years of age. Please check content warnings as some material may be sensitive for some readers.

Even in Death (The Fragile Divine)

A Lesson in Vengeance meets The Taking of Jake Livingston in this page-turning YA horror/fantasy set in dark academia about a queer Black teen who discovers the sinister history of his boarding school and the corrupt powers behind it all. A USA Today bestseller!Regent Academy has a long and storied history in Winslow, Vermont, as does the forest that surrounds it. The school is known for molding teens into leaders, but its history is far more nefarious.  Seventeen-year-old Douglas Jones wants nothing to do with Regent's king-making; he’s just trying to survive. But then a student is murdered and, for some reason, by the next day no one remembers him having ever existed, except for Douglas and the groundskeeper's son, Everett Everley. In his determination to uncover the truth, Douglas awakens a horror hidden within the forest, unearthing secrets that have been buried for centuries. A vengeful creature wants blood as payment for a debt more than three hundred years in the making—or it will swallow all of Winslow in darkness.And for the first time in his life, Douglas might have a chance to grasp the one thing he’s always felt was missing: power. But if he’s not careful, he will find out that power has a tendency to corrupt absolutely everything.A high-octane mystery of murder and magic for fans of Ace of Spades, House of Hollow, and Get Out!

The Forest Demands Its Due

Juno Dawson's Her Majesty's Royal Coven meets a Jim Jarmusch movie. A directionless college-dropout deals with sexuality, minimum-wage jobs, lunar cycles, toxic masculinity and the everyday perils of life as a modern werewolf. Brian, an aimless slacker, works doubles at his shift job, forgets to clean his room and lays about with his friends Nik and Darby. He's been struggling to manage his transition to adulthood almost as much as his monthly transitions to a werewolf. Really, he is not great at the whole werewolf thing, and his recent murderous slip-ups have caught the attention of Tyler, a Millennial were-mentor determined to take the mythological world by storm. Tyler has got a plan, and weirdly his self-help punditry actually encourages Brian to shape up and to stop accidentally marking out guys who ghosted him on Grindr as potential monthly victims. But as Brian gets closer to Tyler's pack, and alienated from Nik and Darby, he realizes that Tyler's expansion plans are much more nefarious than a little lupine enlightenment... Big-hearted, goofy, anarchic and funny, Bored Gay Werewolf is a smart take on the doomsday logic of late capitalism and the complicated meeting point of masculinity and sexuality. More than that, though, and like Scooby Doo with Grindr or Stranger Things with sex and ennui, it’s a buddy novel about finding your pack, the power of friendship, and learning how to be comfortable in your own, shaggy werewolf pelt.

Bored Gay Werewolf

Winner of the National Book AwardWinner of the California Book AwardWinner of Tournament of Books. Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly but who has haunted the edges of his life: Juan Gay. Playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized, Juan has a project to pass along, one built around a true artifact of a book―Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns―and its devastating history. This book contains accounts collected in the early twentieth century from queer subjects by a queer researcher, Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was then co-opted by a committee, her name buried. The voices of these subjects have been filtered, muted, but it is possible to hear them from within and beyond the text, which, in Juan’s tattered volumes, has been redacted with black marker on nearly every page. As Juan waits for his end, he and the narrator recount for each other moments of joy and oblivion; they resurrect loves, lives, mothers, fathers, minor heroes. In telling their own stories and the story of the book, they resist the ravages of memory and time. The past is with us, beside us, ahead of us; what are we to create from its gaps and erasures?. A book about storytelling―its legacies, dangers, delights, and potential for change―and a bold exploration of form, art, and love, Justin Torres’s Blackouts uses fiction to see through the inventions of history and narrative. A marvel of creative imagination, it draws on testimony, photographs, illustrations, and a range of influences as it insists that we look long and steadily at what we have inherited and what we have made―a world full of ghostly shadows and flashing moments of truth. A reclamation of ransacked history, a celebration of defiance, and a transformative encounter, Blackouts mines the stories that have been kept from us and brings them into the light.

Blackouts: A Novel

With the political intrigue and high heat of A Court of Thorns and Roses and From Blood and Ash, A Betrayal of Storms is perfect for readers who enjoy stories full of magic, romance, and adventure... but with added spice.. Half-fey Robin Vale has grown up amongst humans, but that doesn’t save him from being captured for coin by fey hunters. When he’s rescued by a fey princess, he’s taken to Wychwood, the fey realm – where everyone is focused on preparing for war against the humans who hate, hunt, and kill them for coin.. Robin doesn’t understand how he fits into the fey’s plans... until he’s revealed to be the lost heir to the Icethorn Court. Aided by the unclaimed, destructive power of the Winter Court, which had been thought destroyed with Robin’s mother’s death, the fey ready their numbers for complete domination of the human realm.. But by claiming the throne with the help of his devastatingly handsome personal guard, Erix, Robin’s very presence opposes the long-planned invasion. Along with his allies – including Althea, a stern princess hellbent on stopping the human hunters from killing her kin – Robin is thrust into a world of betrayal, murder, and lies. He must survive long enough to have the choice: listen to fate and claim his family’s power, or let it wreak havoc on a realm that turned its back on him for becoming who he was truly meant to be.

A Betrayal of Storms: Realm of Fey

Vampires, vampire slayers, and a bloodthirsty underground resistance converge in a campy YA fantasy about being a queer teen in a world that wishes they did not exist.The librarian and critically acclaimed author of Out of Salem puts a pulpy spin on vampire fiction, and bites back at anti-trans moral panic.Fawn and Silver share nearly everything: coming out together as trans in their small Maryland town, clocking a copious number of hours in detention, and spending their sleepovers secretly making out. They’re also uniquely obsessed with vampires, who are being hunted, imprisoned, and executed for the danger they allegedly pose to human life.Meanwhile in Seattle, Rachel's relationship to her girlfriend and her membership in her mother's vampire-slaying vigilante group is thrown into question when she's bitten by her mother's nemesis and awakes with a craving for blood. When Silver disappears and Fawn goes west in search of him, her and Rachel’s fates converge, both falling into the hands of Cain, an edgelord vampire known for his proselytizing for the drinking of human blood.But in discovering hidden tunnels and secret bars, youth shelters and punk shows and safe houses, Fawn find herself in the middle of a vampire underground in Seattle—an organized resistance keeping each other alive through a network of blood distribution and protection from slayers.Fawn’s Blood is a timely antidote to the anti-trans moral panic of today. Playing with tropes about monstrousness, predation, and villainy, this multi-voiced vampire novel offers a paranormal YA fantasy full of complicated queer characters—human and monster alike—all of whom are simply trying to survive in a world that wants them dead.

Fawn's Blood: A Novel

“You made a bargain...Your soul for his—and now, you are mine.”In New Orleans, one rule stands above the rest: never cross the Gage crime family. Their word is law. Their enemies disappear. And their prince—lethal, beautiful, and utterly inhuman—does not grant mercy.Cate Holloway has spent her life avoiding them—until her brother makes a mistake that cannot be undone. Now, to save him, she must face Lachlan Gage, the dark prince of the city's underworld. But Lachlan doesn’t deal in money or favors. He deals in souls.Bound by a bargain she never wanted, Cate is dragged into a world she never should have seen—where shadows whisper secrets, fae courts plot in the dark, and her captor is far more than just a crime lord. With only thirty days to break the curse that binds her, Cate has two choices: outwit the ruthless fae who holds her fate… or surrender to the dangerous temptation he offers.Because if she fails, she won’t just lose her soul. She’ll lose her heart—to the one being she swore to hate.The Filthy Rich Fae series is best enjoyed in order.Reading Order:Book #1 Filthy Rich FaeBook #2 Fallen Court

Filthy Rich Fae (Filthy Rich Fae, 1)

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERDon't miss out on the stunning DELUXE LIMITED EDITION while supplies last. This breathtaking collectible is only available on a limited first print run in the U.S. and Canada only, a must-have for any book lover.Fans of Crescent City and Scarlett St. Clair will be swept into a world of ruthless fae, forbidden romance, and treacherous bargains in this spellbinding fantasy romance.One fae prince. One deadly bargain. And a mortal caught between desire and damnation.Cate thought she knew darkness. As a trauma nurse, she had witnessed the worst of humanity. But nothing―not the blood, the violence, or the despair―could have prepared her for the fae underworld. A realm where beauty is a weapon, desire is a trap, and mortals who stray too far don’t return.She almost didn’t.Until Lachlan Gage―shadowed, ruthless, and feared even among his own kind―bound her to him with a deadly bargain. As the prince of New Orleans and ruler of the Nether Court, he is as much a curse as he is salvation. And with the Wild Hunt at his heels and war stirring between the fae courts, even his protection may not be enough to save her.Because Cate is more than just his reluctant mortal. She is wanted. Coveted. And the prince of the Hallow Court will do anything to claim her.But something ancient is rising in the dark, warping fae magic into something unnatural and cruel. It has nothing to do with Cate’s past―or so she tells herself. Even though the ring left behind by her mother whispers otherwise.There is only one thing more dangerous than the fae who would kill for her.The fae who would die for her.And Lachlan Gage has never been one to lose.The Filthy Rich Fae series is best enjoyed in order.Reading Order:Book #1 Filthy Rich FaeBook #2 Fallen Court

Filthy Rich Fae: Fallen Court (Filthy Rich Fae, 2)

She knows the taste of death. He’ll stoke her hunger for it. Eighteen-year-old Sarai doesn’t know why someone tried to kill her four years ago, but she does know that her case was closed without justice. Hellbent on vengeance, she returns to the scene of the crime as a Petitor, a prosecutor who can magically detect lies, and is assigned to work with Tetrarch Kadra. Ice-cold and perennially sadistic, Kadra is the most vicious of the four judges who rule the land—and the prime suspect in a string of deaths identical to Sarai’s attempted murder.   Certain of his guilt, Sarai begins a double life: solving cases with Kadra by day and plotting his ruin by night. But Kadra is charming and there’s something alluring about the wrath he wields against the city’s corruption. So when the evidence she finds embroils her in a deadly political battle, Sarai must also fight against her attraction to Kadra—because despite his growing hold on her heart, his voice matches the only memory she has of her assailant…   A dazzling Ancient Rome-inspired romantasy debut, This Monster of Mine is a bloodbath of manipulation, deception, and forbidden love.

This Monster of Mine

Not So Well Read

Genre-focused indie bookstore owner with the personality of a border collie and the tastes of a victorian ghost.

Courtney Ulrich Smith

During this phase, we're reviewing manuscripts and deciding which book we want to publish. At the end of this phase, we offer an author a book deal.

Consideration

As the manuscript goes through several phases of editorial work, the cover and interior design takes place, while format decisions about paper stocks and printing treatments are made.

Editorial & Design

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Courtney

I’m a genre-obsessed reader who has made books my entire life–literally, I own a independent bookstore and founded a non-profit book festival in my hometown. I believe that reading is meant to be fun and so there’s no such thing as a “guilty” pleasure read. I’m here to help folks find their next favorite book sans stigmas, expectations, or required reading.
