DAWN OF THE FIREBIRD

 Welcome to my showcase for  DAWN OF THE FIREBIRD which is been hosted by Park Row Books, Hanover Square Press, MIRA Books HarperCollinsPublishers | Harlequin Trade Publishing

Dawn of the Firebird (Deluxe Limited Edition) : A Novel 

Sarah Mughal Rana

On Sale Date: December 2, 2025

9780778387664

Hardcover

$30.00 USD

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Before…

Year 495 after Nuh’s great flood,

Era of the heavenly birds

Tezmi’a Mountains, Azadniabad Empire

I would inherit the power of the Heavens, Uma had said so.

But my power was a curse, this she did not have to say. Like any great legend, my tale began with tragedy.

In the stories later recounted from my maternal uncle, my uma had a glad-tiding the night of my birth, as all mothers of gifted children did. It was near the winter solstice in the year 495, she dreamt of light emanating from my infant body, bathing her in a cool glow. She knew the Divine had shown the power I would come to inherit: nūr, cold Heavenly light, the same spiritual power that flows through the firebird.

But that night when I sprang free of Uma’s womb, our chieftains dreamt of a world of darkness. War and destruction. She is an omen, the tribe murmured, despite my uncle the khan reprimanding their frivolous superstitions. Her mother refuses to name her, nor does her father, the Great Emperor, accept her. With his many wives and heirs, this child is but one of many. But Uma knew in her heart that blessings came with a little suffering, that was the Divine’s way. My child is neither cursed nor omen. She has the affinity of light. Uma liked her secrets. This one she tucked close to her chest.

In the spring pastures of our valley Tezmi’a, that year brought a drought that starved the lands, killing portions of herd. Other peculiar happenings sowed fear in the tribe: more raids, more deaths. When Uma suckled me, wild birds would encircle the yurt before flapping into the felt tents, spilling dried meat, spoiling the yak milk and provoking our hunting birds.

‘The girl is cursed,’ my clansmen argued.

‘The girl is simply a girl. And we are God-fearing men,’ my uncle would reprimand. ‘We blame misfortune on no one but our own sins.’

‘But the birds,’ the tribe would insist, ‘they surround the babe. She is unnatural!’ It was true – wherever I was carried there was the sweep of wings above, and birdsong from the trees.

Swaddling me close, the khan’s most favoured wife spoke. Babshah Khatun. To her, not one dared argue. ‘Enough, you superstitious fools. She is a blessing who has brought forth more birds for hunting. She is unusual; but, unusual children bear the greatest gifts. However I hear your fear. The chief folkteller has the hearts of their kinsmen, for they carry the histories of our sorrows. As your folkteller, Divine as my witness, I will make this babe my apprentice. She will carry with her the tales of your greatest joys and fears until the end of her days.’

The stern lady, though young, never broke her oaths. In irony, her oath became my curse. 

In the winter quarters, the best pastures were south of the alpine lake. That year, the khan’s tribe erected their yurts and herded thousands of yaks, wild mares and lambs at the base of the harsh snow-capped mountains, amongst the rolling green alpine meadows, thin grass growing above cold dirt. From the lake, icy streams broke through the rocky grasslands of Tezmi’a.

It was my seventh Flood Festival, commemorating the day Nuh left the ark after the Great Flood. That morning, the children competed, to see whose prized hunting bird would find the keenest prey. Before long, the khan’s favoured wife interrupted and led the children up the pastures until they reached the end of the settlement of tents, toward the thick woodland. 

Some of the tribe’s warriors, who’d escorted goods and cattle across the mountain pass for the emperor’s merchants, rested against the boundary of trees, waxing their compound bows. Others sipped apricot tea to fling back the wet chill, nodding to us in greeting. The khan sat with them, my uma – his sister – beside him. When she spotted our group, Uma scowled and stalked toward us.

‘O, Babshah, what senseless idea do you have now?’

Babshah Khatun merely smiled in silence. Uma placed a hand against my back, staring at the hunting birds cowing upon my shoulder. She warned, ‘Do not go too south of the mountain pass. There are patrols from the enemy clans who snatch away children like her.’

Still Babshah Khatun continued deep into the womb of the valley, past protruding boulders, and clumps of elm, into the tall deep grasses that fattened the wild onagers. Trails where humans rarely ventured, and the jinn-folk still reigned. The wind whispered into the children’s hair. The entombed roots of wizened trees sprawled through the woodlands, and whizzing sprites, those mischievous little apprentices to the long-passed fae of these lands, showered seeds to pollinate the flora. A deceivingly drowsy day for the violence that it promised. A place where the old ways still mattered and the Divine-made boundary between jinn-folk and human blurred.

Determined, I tripped along next to Babshah, resisting the urge to clasp the long end of her yak leather tunic, lest she think me not brave. Even my hunting buzzards on my shoulders canted their heads, curious.

Babshah sat squat and brushed her pale hand across the dirt. Her black hair swung with the wind, a dozen thin braids clasped in silver beads and an array of hawk feathers, not dissimilar to my own. The only difference was a camel-skin cord around her temple with a blue wooden block indicating her status as a wife of the khan.

‘Today, we will do a new type of hunt,’ Babshah declared. ‘Hunting by folktelling.’

The children murmured amongst themselves, but Babshah did not elaborate. Instead, she latched on to my hand – ‘Prepare yourself, my apprentice’ – before continuing along the fir path.

When we stopped, and it came time for our hunting pairings, my milk-sibling Haj refused to take me as a partner. He was ten years old, only three years my senior, but the gap was large enough to fuel his arrogance. He took his complaints to Babshah.

‘My uma says to stay away from her, else she will curse my bird’s game! I train with a spotted sparrowhawk. The girl trains with a pair of sooty buzzards. Smaller and useless, just like her. With all the birds that follow her, she will scare away the prey.’

‘I may be Ayşenor’s only child, but I am not useless,’ I muttered, keeping my lip from trembling.

***

Excerpted from Dawn of the Firebird by Sarah Mughal Rana, Copyright © 2025 by Sarah Mughal rana. Published by Hanover Square Press.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

For fans of The Poppy War, She Who Became the Sun, and The Will of the Many, a breathtaking fantasy novel about the daughter of an overthrown emperor from an exciting new voice

Khamilla Zahr-zad’s life has been built on a foundation of violence and vengeance. Every home she’s known has been destroyed by war. As the daughter of an emperor’s clan, she spent her childhood training to maintain his throne. But when her clansmen are assassinated by another rival empire, plans change. With her heavenly magic of nur, Khamilla is a weapon even enemies would wield—especially those in the magical, scholarly city of Za’skar. Hiding her identity, Khamilla joins the enemy’s army school full of jinn, magic, and martial arts, risking it all to topple her adversaries, avenge her clan, and reclaim their throne.

To survive, she studies under cutthroat mystic monks and battles in a series of contests to outmaneuver her fellow soldiers. She must win at all costs, even if it means embracing the darkness lurking inside her. But the more she excels, the more she is faced with history that contradicts her father’s teachings. With a war brewing amongst the kingdoms and a new twisted magic overtaking the land, Khamilla is torn between two impossible choices: vengeance or salvation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

SARAH MUGHAL RANA is a Muslim author and student who completed her bachelors with honours at the University of Toronto and is now at Oxford University, studying at the intersection of economics and policy. She is a BookTok personality and the co-host of On The Write Track Podcast where she enjoys spilling tea with her favourite authors about the book world. Her debut YA novel, Hope Ablaze, published in February 2024. Outside of school, she falls down history rabbit holes and trains in traditional martial arts.

Social Links:

Author Website: https://www.sarahmughalrana.net/

Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sarahmughal769 

NO ONE ABOARD

 Welcome  to my showcase for NO ONE ABOARD which  is  been  hold by Park Row Books, Hanover Square Press, MIRA Books , HarperCollinsPublishers | Harlequin Trade Publishing

No One Aboard  

Emy McGuire

On Sale Date: December 2, 2025

9781525831621

Trade Paperback

Graydon House

$18.99 USD

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Chapter 1

Jerry Baugh

Jerry Baugh didn’t see the ship. He didn’t notice the red warning on the screen. He was, in fact, cozied up in the cockpit of his Dyer 29 lobster boat, feet propped between the rungs of the helm and hands stacked on his belly.

Jerry’s day of deep-sea fishing had been successful—a sailfish bill, broken at the hilt, currently stuck out of his bomber jacket pocket—and he was thinking about whether the meat

should be marinated in lemon juice or just plain old butter.

He was too distracted to detect the boat in his path—white and gleaming, suspended between the black water of the Atlantic and the starless, moonless sky with the same sinister beauty of an iceberg.

Or a ghost.

When the boat alarm went off, Jerry jolted in his seat, sending his Bass Pro Shops cap tumbling down his chest. A single drop of sailfish blood had, at some point, fallen onto the face of his watch, which read nine minutes after midnight.

He detangled his feet from the helm and peered at the radar. He was heading two hundred and fifty-eight degrees toward Hallandale Marina. The strange white sailboat blocked

his way.

Jerry switched off the autopilot and eased the throttle to slow down, his heart thumping soundly in his chest. If the alarm hadn’t sounded, he might have shipwrecked them both.

This sent a surge of anger through him. Why hadn’t the captain of the sailboat moved out of his way? Sheila 2.0 wasn’t subtle, her engine making an ugly chewing noise not unlike a trash compactor. They should have heard her coming.

Jerry allowed his boat to chug closer before he killed the engine and processed what on the devil’s blue sea he was looking at.

It was a sailboat, yes, but not like the rust-laced ones that docked near Sheila 2.0 in the Hallandale Marina.

This boat was mesmerizing.

It had twin aluminum masts, a wood-finished deck, and sunbathing mattresses laid out on the chart house. The body of the boat was a blinding white, smooth, curvaceous. The cap

rails were teak and coated with a glittering crust of sea salt. No one had cleaned them in some time. Cursive lettering on the side spelled out the boat’s name.

The Old Eileen

Jerry stared, a bit starstruck. Boats like Sheila 2.0 were made to choke marine diesel oil and seawater until they finally died twitching in a harbor like a waterlogged beetle on its back.

Boats like The Old Eileen were made to be beautiful.

Jerry found his radio, hooked to his waistband, and cleared

his throat before speaking into it.

“Eileen, Eileen, Eileen, this is Sheila, Sheila, Sheila, over.”

He waited.

There was a time when Jerry was younger (and a good bit stupider) that he wanted to buy a sailboat instead of a motorboat. It was romantic, the idea of harnessing the wind to travel

the world. But in the end, it was those same winds that terrified him. Wind could overpower him, seize control of the boat and bend its course. Jerry would have had to accept that possibility. He would have had to bare his throat to the mercy of the sea.

A mercy, he had come to understand, that did not exist.

“Eileen, Eileen, Eileen!” Jerry repeated into the radio.

They must be asleep. Jerry leaned forward and sounded his horn—five short blasts to signal danger. He waited for the radio to crackle to life, for a silver-spooned captain to sputter

apologies, or maybe for an underpaid deckhand to rush up top and get the boat moving once more.

There was only the sound of the luffing, useless sails, and the ever-shifting sea.

Jerry frowned and fiddled with the fish bill in his pocket.

He should leave.

He fumbled in the dark to switch the engine back on. He would report what he’d seen to the coast guard, get the captain in trouble for being so reckless. He’d be back in Florida by dawn.

But Steve . . .

Jerry glanced at his dash where he had taped up a photograph of himself with his younger brother. It was the last picture taken of Steve before he died. Jerry closed his eyes for a moment. He would have traded his boat, his bait, and everything he owned if someone had stopped that night to help Steve.

“Well, shit.” Jerry rubbed at his clavicle and swallowed hard. He would be in and out. Just to make sure all was well.

Jerry moved across the deck, aware of every sound his shuffling feet made. He rummaged through his fishing equipment, eyes never leaving The Old Eileen. His calloused, practiced

hands fit right around the harpoon gun, and he felt a measure of reassurance with a weapon in his grasp. He wasn’t scared, he was too old for that, but there was nothing quite like a creaking, old ship on the ocean at night to make a man into a boy again.

He tucked the harpoon gun under one arm and set to work

lowering his tiny dinghy. He’d take one moment to wake

whoever was on board, then get right back on his boat. Good

deed done for the day. Maybe the decade.

Jerry grunted as he climbed up the Eileen’s porthole and over the rail. The deck was empty save for an orange life preserver tied to the stern, the boat’s name written in black on the top and a slogan in italics around the bottom.

Unwind Yachting Co.

Safe to sail in any gale!

With no one in sight, Jerry located the companionway stairs that led down beneath the cockpit and gave one last scan of the deck before going below.

Downstairs, the chart house was neat and captainless, but the ship’s manifest was sitting in the center of the table, open to the first page.

SHIP’S MANIFEST—THE OLD EILEEN

SKIPPER—Captain Francis Ryan Cameron (55)

MATE—MJ Tuckett (67)

CREW—Alejandro Matamoros (54), Nicolás de la Vega (22)

PASSENGERS—Lila Logan Cameron (54), Francis Rylan Cameron (17), Taliea Indigo Cameron (17)

Seven souls. Seven souls aboard The Old Eileen, and not a single one had answered the radio, which lay next to the manifest like an amputated limb. Jerry picked it up and felt an ice-cold trickle of sweat on the back of his neck.

The cord had been cut.

Jerry’s knuckles went white against the harpoon gun. Bad things happen at sea. Storms kill and brothers drown.

But the radio cord hadn’t been severed by the ocean.

Jerry crept through the luxurious salon and to a door that must lead to a cabin. He let his trigger hand slip down for a moment so he could turn his radio to 16—the international maritime emergency channel.

Just in case.

He opened the door to the cabin.

The master bedroom. King-size bed with an indigo comforter and cream sheets. Velvet couch molded to fit the tight corner. A woman’s lipstick lay open on one bedside table, rolling back and forth as the boat rocked.

There was no one there. No sleeping captain, no apologetic deckhands, no life whatsoever. Had they just . . . left?

Jerry checked the next room. This one held two twin beds with identical navy bedspreads. One bed was unmade, with a variety of books scattered at its foot. The bedclothes on the other were tucked in, military-style.

A sketchbook was half hidden by the pillowcase, open to an illustration of some kind of monster.

Jerry mopped his brow with a rag he kept in his shirt pocket, not caring that it had dried sailfish blood caking the edges. He should have motored on by and called the damn guard.

He forced himself to concentrate. He was doing the right thing. The captain could be out cold and in need of help.

There were only a few more rooms.

But the last cabin was just as quiet.

Jerry peeked into the galley and the bilges, running out of places to check.

The heads. Each of the three cabins must have its own personal bathroom, and he hadn’t yet tried any of them. Hands slick with sweat around the harpoon gun, Jerry retraced his steps, checking first in the crew members’ head, then the master suite’s, then back to the room with the twin beds and the drawing of the monster.

He nudged open the last bathroom door and looked inside.

In the mirror, his own ref lection stared back at him, interrupted only by a string of crimson words that had been written on the glass.

A weight dropped anchor inside his stomach, flooding Jerry with a kind of dread he had avoided for thirty years. The harpoon gun slipped from his hands, and he reached for his radio, unable to peel his gaze from the message on the mirror.

Save your Self

The Convey

OPINION: The Ocean Is Our Great Equalizer (why the newest Atlantic disaster seems to

spell K-A-R-M-A for the one percent)

MIKE GRADY

The Camerons—a family of four headed by television darling Lila Logan and business tycoon Francis Cameron—have been reported missing after their multimillion-dollar sailing yacht turned up eighty miles offshore without a single person onboard early in the morning of June 9. Authorities and reporters have leaped into extensive action. The Atlantic has already been tempestuous at the beginning of this year’s hurricane season. Potential upcoming storms have given the search a dangerous time component in an investigation reminiscent of the Titan, the infamous submersible that imploded with five passengers aboard on its way to see the Titanic wreck. The world had plenty to say about the Titan and its affluent victims, and this latest oceanic mystery has the potential to play out the same. Francis and Lila Cameron both had modest childhoods, but thanks to the entertainment industry, the business world, and the good old American dream, they have skyrocketed into the fraction of Americans who own multiple homes (Palm Beach villa, LA bungalow, and a sleek Aspen chalet, if anyone’s wondering), not to mention the multimillion-dollar sailing yacht that came up empty in the early hours of yesterday morning. While I’m not necessarily here to say that the Atlantic Ocean is doing a better job than God or taxes to rid us of the elite, I do want to pose a big-picture question while authorities are sussing out the how did this happen? and where did they go? Of it all. My question instead to you, dear reader, is this: Why the Camerons?

Excerpted from No One Aboard by Emy McGuire, Copyright © 2025 by Emy McGuire. Published by Graydon House.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

The White Lotus meets Laura Dave’s The Last Thing He Told Me in this debut domestic mystery about a luxury sailboat found floating adrift in the ocean and the secrets of the missing family who set sail aboard it weeks before.

"No One Aboard is a riveting, astonishing debut, and Emy McGuire is an important new voice in fiction. I will read anything she writes!" 

—Sarah Pekkanen, #1 New York Times bestselling author

At the start of summer, billionaire couple Francis and Lila Cameron set off on their private luxury sailboat to celebrate the high school graduation of their two beloved children.

Three weeks later, the Camerons have not been heard from, the captain hasn’t responded to radio calls, and the sailboat is found floating off the coast of Florida.

Empty.

Where are the Camerons? What happened on their trip? And what secrets does the beautiful boat hold?

Set over the course of their vacation and in the aftermath of the sailboat’s discovery, No One Aboard asks who is more dangerous to a family: a stormy ocean or each other?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

EMY MCGUIRE holds a bachelor’s degree in theatre/creative writing from New College of Florida. She has toured nationally in the Edgar Allan Poe Show, sailed from Rome to Antigua, and written everything from ocean thrillers to pirate musicals. She lives in Colorado.

Social Links:

Author website: https://www.emymcguire.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emy_mcguire/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/emy.mcguire/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@emymcguire?lang=en 

Twitter: https://x.com/AuthorEmy

LIBRARY OF FATES

 Welcome to my showcase for  LIBRARY OF FATES which is been hosted by Park Row Books, Hanover Square Press, MIRA Book ,HarperCollinsPublishers | Harlequin Trade Publishing

The Library of Fates 
By Margot Harrison
On Sale: December 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781525804311
Graydon House Hardcover 
Price: $30.00

Buy Links:

HarperCollins: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-library-of-fates-

margot-harrison?variant=43819432935458 

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1525804316 

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-margot-harrison/1146730878 

BookShop.org: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-library-of-fates-margot-harrison/

df8857ce86f517ae?ean=9781525804311 

Now September 26, 2019, 1:15 p.m. The Library of Fates lived tucked under the mansarded roof of a tall, charcoal- gray building in Harvard Yard. To a casual visitor, it was like any other library, lined with shelves for hours of pleasantly aimless browsing. But every student knew that if you came to the Library of Fates and asked for a book to guide you safely through turbulent times, the librarian would go straight to the shelf and put a book in your hands. And that book would change your life. Eleanor Dennet was that librarian now, but the knowledge felt hollow. Her predecessor, Odile Vernet— her mentor, her guiding star, her best friend— had died suddenly three days ago, and she could barely process it. Her throat still raw from crying, her brain still woozy from too much vodka, she stepped over the threshold of the library that had been her refuge for most of the past twenty-four years. On the surface, everything seemed the same: the dark oak paneling and moss- green area rugs and accents; the pearly glow that came through the recessed skylight; the sweet, faintly musty smell. The custodian had opened the curtains and blinds of the nine bay windows on each long side of the room. Sunlight bathed the books in a greenish haze and washed over the varnished seminar table and armchairs. The mural on the ceiling evoked the magic of stories. But something felt different here. Something was wrong. Then Eleanor saw him. From his seat in a green brocade armchair angled toward the window, he didn’t seem to have noticed her entrance. Barely daring to breathe, she took in black hair sprinkled with gray on the headrest and long lashes outlined on his cheek as he gazed down at a sheaf of papers in his hand. Daniel Vernet, Odile’s son. The last time they’d seen each other, in 1995, they’d been standing here in the library. Eleanor’s view of Daniel had been clouded by tears, but she would never forget his dark eyes gazing back as if she were a stranger. The bland way he’d smiled, as if she meant nothing to him after everything they’d been through. And here were more damned tears, rising and choking her. She would have to face Daniel eventually, to give condolences and make arrangements for his mother’s memorial. But not yet. She wasn’t ready for that. She darted to the window bay farthest from his chair, silent on the thick carpet, and slipped behind the floor-length curtain. Daniel sighed heavily. The papers crackled. Frozen in place, Eleanor watched through a gap as he stood up. He didn’t look his age, the lines of his chin and cheekbones still firm. A sharp click- clack of heels sounded on the stairs behind them. “Ready, Daniel?” asked a slightly accented voice that Eleanor recognized as Liliana, Odile’s housekeeper and close friend. Daniel nodded, but his gaze was still on the papers. “What the hell is this?” he asked. “What the hell?” As the older woman put a soothing hand on Daniel’s shoulder, Eleanor saw his body heave. Was he grieving his mother, then? Their relationship had never been smooth. Though Odile visited her son in Europe on occasion, it had taken her death to bring him back to the States for the first time in decades. Liliana gave Daniel a hug and led him toward the door. “Everything will work out. You’ll see. We don’t want to be late for our appointment.” “I’m just so confused!” Eleanor heard him still exclaiming as their feet thudded down the stairs. She emerged from behind the curtain and stood very still, waiting for the tension to dissipate and the atmosphere to settle. Listening for a faint but steady thrum on the edge of her awareness, a rumble that was neither pipes nor heating. Like Odile, Eleanor was attuned to the library’s vibrations, inaudible to most people. But now, standing dead center in the library, straining her senses in the stillness, she detected no reassuring thrum. Nothing. As if the library were an immense machine that had stopped running. Panic gripped her. It can’t be. She hurried to the oak door at the far end of the room and unlocked it with trembling fingers. Here in the librarian’s small office, The Book of Dark Nights was kept, secure in a safe, its pages alive with the power of the secrets trapped inside, for the library drew its power from the Book. As long as the Book remained there, the library would function. On top of the safe, she found a sticky note in Odile’s strong cursive: A place of pages, A subterranean secret, Where love is shared. One book brought you together. Start from there. Eleanor stared at it for a dazed second. Odile often left literary quotes on sticky notes, but this didn’t seem like the style of poetry she would read— or write, if Odile had been a poet. Then she knelt beside the safe to type in the code. Fumbling in her urgency, she had to enter it twice before the light turned green and she could swing the door open. Eleanor closed her eyes and said a silent prayer: Please let it be here. The Book had been stolen only once, and the results had been disastrous. Eleanor tried not to think about them as she reached into the safe for the cracked calfskin of the Book’s binding, bracing herself to feel the usual tingle as her fingers made contact. Needing to experience that uncanny suggestion that the Book was alive. To know that it was only Daniel’s presence that had made the library feel wrong. But there was nothing. She knew people saw her as Odile’s mousy, adoring acolyte, hidden away in the library like a relic herself. A perennial student who had never even finished her PhD. A wan spinster, a living history display. Here in the library was the one place Eleanor mattered. In these books is your future, Odile had told her long ago. In these books are all the tools you need to live your life to the fullest. But all that depended on the magic. And as she ran shaky fingers from corner to corner of the steel compartment, she found only shadows and a fine, powdery dust that came off on her fingertips. The Book of Dark Nights was gone. Excerpted from THE LIBRARY OF FATES by Margot Harrison, Copyright © 2025 by Margot Harrison. Published by Graydon House, an imprint of HarperCollins.

About the Book:

When its librarian keeper mysteriously dies, two former classmates must race to locate a rare book from their college years that can foretell your future if you confess a secret from your past—but someone is intent on protecting what’s hidden inside.

It can write the story of your future... and hide the secrets of your past

The Library of Fates was designed to show you who you are—and who you could become. Its rarest book, The Book of Dark Nights, holds a secret: when you write an intimate confession on its pages, you'll receive a prediction for your future, penned in your own handwriting.

For Eleanor, whose childhood was defined by a senseless tragedy, the library offers a world where everything makes sense. She’s spent most of her life there as an apprentice to the brilliant librarian, showing other people how to find the meaning of their lives in stories.

But when her mentor dies in a freak accident and The Book of Dark Nights goes missing—along with the secrets written inside—Eleanor is pulled out of the library and into a quest to locate it with the last person she expects: the librarian’s estranged son, Daniel, who Eleanor once loved.

Together, as they hunt down clues from Harvard to Paris, Eleanor and Daniel grow closer again, regaining each other’s trust. But little do they know that they’re entangled in a much larger web. Someone else wants the book, and they'll go to dark lengths to get it...

About the Author: MARGOT HARRISON  is the author of The Midnight Club and The Library of Fates. She is also the author of four young adult novels, including an Indies Introduce Pick, Junior Library Guild Selections, and Vermont Book Award Finalists. She grew up in New York and now lives in Vermont.

Social Links:

Author Website: https://margotharrison.com/ 

X: https://x.com/MargotFHarrison/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/margotfharrison/ 

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14215617.Margot_Harrison 

TILL TAUGHT BY PAIN by Susan Coventry

 Welcome to  my showcase for TILL TAUGHT BY PAIN by Susan Coventry  which is been hosted by  Regal House Publishing

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Prologue

1922, October

Baltimore, Maryland

1201 Eutaw Place, Baltimore, MD

October 16, 1922

Dear Dr. Welch,

Thank you for your letter and for the trouble you have taken trying to satisfy Dr. Halsted’s sisters. As you say, the memories that I have are what stay with me and the hours between seven and half past eight when we would sit together are the most lonesome of the whole 24 hours…

—Caroline Hampton Halsted to Dr. W. H. Welch, October 1922 

My vision blurred. Why was I doing this? No one had ever accused me of being a hysterical woman. I was never outwardly emotional; yet, here I was, tapping my private pain onto the keys of William’s typewriter to burden his most steadfast friend with my grief. Hadn’t Dr. Welch done enough for William over the years? Must he now also console the widow? An impossible task.

The letter would have to wait until I was more self-composed. I shouldn’t be dwelling on how empty the hours were when I had tasks to fill them. If William were here, he would give me one of those wry looks. I could see him doing it.

“Oh, William.”

Swiping the back of my hand over my eyes, I cleared away both tears and my late husband’s image and, instead, regarded his study. Off limits. It had always been off limits. I never bothered him here. This was where he lost himself in his work—that fiction we’d told one another, not with words but with the lack of them. The neat chaos supported the story: journals bearing snips of blue paper as markers, stacked into orderly piles; one basket of correspondence to answer and one for his secretary to file; a draft of the paper he’d been struggling with, more crossed out on the page than remained; scattered books. And downstairs in his library, there were case files, laboratory notes, and more shelves and shelves and shelves of books and journals.

I moved to the window to pull back the drapes. Drawing in a breath, I could still smell tobacco, a distinctly William smell. It was twined down into the antique furnishings, the drapes, and the oriental carpet, too deep to ever dissipate. How sad I could not relish it, but it stank.

It was quiet enough to hear the soft tick of his Gustav Becker wall clock, a gift from a German colleague. The beats sounded slow, as though minutes must now crawl by to rebalance time itself after the hours had slipped away from us so quickly.

Over the past year, William had determined more than once to sort through the accumulation of a busy, productive lifetime, but he was distracted from so desolate a task by the more urgent call to complete what he had started, to move on to more. He’d been so purposeful. All his life, he had been purposeful. That’s what people would remember. Wouldn’t they?

Perhaps not his sisters. Ridiculous creatures. With their Billy would want such-and-such and oh, we have to do this-and-that. Billy? In the end, I’d thrown up my hands. I was only a wife; I wasn’t about to argue with sisters. But neither would I trek up to New York to put him into a grave in the city he’d left all those years ago. I refused to see him buried un-der some hideously sentimental headstone with claptrap about angels. Thank God for Dr. Welch.

Dr. Halsted always said his sisters knew nothing about science and cared less.

Mrs. Halsted, with your permission, I’ll order the headstone.

He’d done it too:

William Stewart Halsted, M.D. 

September 23, 1852-September 7, 1922 

Professor of Surgery in the Johns Hopkins Hospital

Elegantly simple. William would have approved. And his sisters would not argue with the imposing Dr. Welch.

I would have to ask him what should be preserved for the university and the medical library. William’s friend Dr. Crowe said the books and journals were worth quite a bit and I should sell them. But William left me ridiculously well provided for. Surely, he expected me to give the books to the school.

More worrisome was what to do with all the accumulated paper.

Someone—one of William’s acolytes—would start nosing about, intent upon memorializing him. Would William prefer that only his published work survive to represent him? All this unfinished business, correspon-dence, notes for speeches—would it embarrass him to have people pawing through it? Would collected bits from William’s life—not only journal articles but private letters, personal recollections, half-remem-bered anecdotes—be pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle to summate the man he’d been? William would hate that. Ill-fitting pieces ruined a puzzle, and not all William’s pieces fit tidily.

He had to trust me to sift through the leavings, tidying them for pos-terity, before someone from the university arrived to cart all his precious papers away.

Precious papers—I had my own boxful back at High Hampton. My heart thudded painfully and heat rose to my face; William could write a pretty letter. I’d always intended to put a flame to them. One day. To keep them from a would-be biographer’s hands.

Lucy would have to do it. I couldn’t travel anywhere now. There was too much to do. Other things more damning to William’s dignity than love letters might still be locked away in drawers and cabinets. I had to be the one to find them.

William would want his secrets, his untidy pieces, buried with his ashes.

Excerpted from TILL TAUGHT BY PAIN by Susan Coventry © 2025 by Susan Coventry, used with permission by Regal House Publishing. 

ABOUT TILL TAUGHT BY PAIN: 

Inspired by the groundbreaking discoveries of ether and chloroform anesthesia, William Stewart Halsted pursues a surgical career with relentless ambition, daring to perform operations deemed impossible by his peers. His reputation skyrockets with each bold success— until his quest for an effective local anesthetic leads him to inject himself with cocaine. Caroline, the niece of Confederate General Wade Hampton, seeks to escape the constraints of post-war South Carolina by training as a nurse. When she takes a position at the prestigious Johns Hopkins Hospital, she finds herself captivated by the brilliant yet troubled chief of surgery, Dr. Halsted. Till Taught by Pain is a poignant exploration of love and sacrifice, as Caroline grapples with the difficult choice between enabling her husband’ s addiction and supporting his pioneering career. As their lives intertwine, both must confront the consequences of ambition, the nature of love, and the toll of personal demons on their shared dreams.

ABOUT Susan Coventry: 

Susan Coventry is a retired physician with a lifelong historical fiction obsession. Her first novel, The Queen’ s Daughter, was a YA historical set in the Middle Ages. She has since switched from YA to adult novels and moved on from medieval Europe to the turn-of- the-20th-century U.S. She lives in Louisville, KY with her historian husband, Brad Asher.