Look what arrived in the post today

Oooh. Shiny.

 

From the back:

The story starts like something out of a fairy tale:  I hated my stepfather.  It’s usually stepmothers in fairy tales.  Well, equal time for stepfathers. . . .

Maggie knows there’s something off about Val, her mom’s new husband.  It’s more than that he’s from Oldworld and doesn’t know how to wear Newworld clothes or use Newworld slang.  Why won’t he have any tech in the shed behind the house that he uses as his office?  And what are the huge, horrible, jagged, jumpy shadows that follow him around?

Newworld is all about science–you’re expected to give up fairy tales as soon as you’re old enough to read them for yourself–and magic is illegal.  Oldworld still uses magic, but in Newworld the magic-carrying gene was disabled two generations ago, back when Maggie’s great-grandmother was a notable magician.  But that was a long time ago.

Then Maggie meets Casimir, the most beautiful boy she’s ever seen.  He’s from Oldworld too–and he’s heard of Maggie’s stepfather, and has a guess about Val’s shadows.  Maggie doesn’t want to know . . . until earth-shattering events force her to depend not only on Casimir’s knowledge of magic, but on Val and his shadows.  And perhaps on her own heritage.

It’s aliiiiiiive.

 

If you zoom in on the black circle in the lower right-hand corner you will see ‘advance uncorrected galleys–not for resale’.  Pub date is September.  By which time we will have ERADICATED typos from the final page proofs, I will have stopped rending my garments and screaming about all the stuff it’s too late to change, and the art department will have finished tweaking the jacket.