Frances Anderson

With a cheating boyfriend, a thankless career in waitressing, and her BA in English going to waste, Mira James jumps at the chance for a fresh start in rural Battle Lake, Minnesota. Right away she lands a job as a librarian, snags another as an on-call reporter for the weekly newspaper, and is swept off her feet by Jeff Wilson, a handsome archaeologist unearthing the town’s storied history. Moving here might be the best decision Mira’s ever made. Until she finds Jeff’s body between the library’s reference stacks.

It has been 20 years since the end of the war. The dictatorial Augurs, once thought of almost as gods, were overthrown and wiped out during the conflict, their much-feared powers mysteriously failing them. Those who had ruled under them, men and women with a lesser ability known as the Gift, avoided the Augurs' fate only by submitting themselves to the rebellion's Four Tenets.

Tenley Roth's first book was a runaway best seller. Now that her second book is due, she's locked in fear. Can she repeat her earlier success, or is she a fraud who has run out of inspiration? A century earlier, another woman wrote at the same desk with hopes and fears of her own. Birdie Shehorn is the daughter of the old-money Knickerbockers. Under the strict control of her mother, her every move is decided ahead of time, even whom she'll marry. Tenley and Birdie are from two very different worlds, but fate has bound them together.