Polly

In Wisdom, Shelter. That’s the official motto of the Scholomance. I suppose you could even argue that it’s true—only the wisdom is hard to come by, so the shelter’s scant. Our beloved school does its best to devour all its students—but now that I’ve reached my senior year and have actually won myself a handful of allies, it’s suddenly developed a particular craving for me. Even if I somehow make it through the endless waves of maleficaria that it keeps throwing at me, I haven’t any idea how my allies and I are going to make it through the graduation hall alive.

I decided that Orion Lake needed to die after the second time he saved my life. Everyone loves Orion Lake. Everyone else, that is. Far as I’m concerned, he can keep his flashy combat magic to himself. I’m not joining his pack of adoring fans. I don’t need help surviving the Scholomance, even if they do. Forget the hordes of monsters and cursed artifacts; I’m probably the most dangerous thing in the place. Just give me a chance and I’ll level mountains and kill untold millions, making myself the dark queen of the world.

Maud Ruthyn, the young, naive heroine, has a governess who is an enigmatic older woman, a liar, bully, and spy, who takes a dark secret with her when she leaves. Maud is then orphaned and moves in with her Uncle Silas, her father's mysterious brother and a man with a scandalous - even murderous - past. She is horrified to find her former governess appears in her life again, in this Gothic Victorian psychological thriller, with a touch of the occult.

Casey Han's four years at Princeton gave her many things, "But no job and a number of bad habits." After graduation, she discovers the reality of having expensive habits without the means to sustain them. As she attempts to navigate Manhattan, we explore her life and New York City's milieu of haves and have-nots.