Welcome to my showcase of THE WITCHES OF MOONSHYNE MANOR by Bianca Marais which is been hosted by HarperCollins/Park Row Books/Hanover Square Press/MIRA Books/Graydon House/HQN Books
Buy Links:85998293
The Witches of Moonshyne Manor
Bianca Marais
On Sale Date: August 23, 2022
9780778386995, 0778386996
Trade Paperback
$16.99 USD, $24.99 CAD
Fiction / Magical Realism
400 pages
About the Book:
A coven of modern-day witches. A magical heist-gone-wrong. A looming threat.
Five octogenarian witches gather as an angry mob threatens to demolish Moonshyne Manor. All eyes
turn to the witch in charge, Queenie, who confesses they’ve fallen far behind on their mortgage
payments. Still, there’s hope, since the imminent return of Ruby—one of the sisterhood who’s been
gone for thirty-three years—will surely be their salvation.
But the mob is only the start of their troubles. One man is hellbent on avenging his family for the theft
of a legacy he claims was rightfully his. In an act of desperation, Queenie makes a bargain with an evil far
more powerful than anything they’ve ever faced. Then things take a turn for the worse when Ruby’s
homecoming reveals a seemingly insurmountable obstacle instead of the solution to all their problems.
The witches are determined to save their home and themselves, but their aging powers are no match
for increasingly malicious threats. Thankfully, they get a bit of help from Persephone, a feisty TikToker
eager to smash the patriarchy. As the deadline to save the manor approaches, fractures among the
sisterhood are revealed, and long-held secrets are exposed, culminating in a fiery confrontation with
their enemies.
Funny, tender and uplifting, the novel explores the formidable power that can be discovered in aging,
found family and unlikely friendships. Marais’ clever prose offers as much laughter as insight, delving
deeply into feminism, identity and power dynamics while stirring up intrigue and drama through secrets,
lies and sex. Heartbreaking and heart-mending, it will make you grateful for the amazing women in your
life.
Saturday, October 23 rd
Morning
Half an hour before the alarm will be sounded for the first time in decades—drawing four
frantic old women and a geriatric crow from all corners of the sprawling manor—Ursula is
awoken by insistent knocking, like giant knuckles rapping against glass. It’s an ominous
sign, to be sure. The first of many.
Trying to rid herself of the sticky cobwebs of sleep, Ursula throws back the covers,
groaning as her joints loudly voice their displeasure. She’s slept in the buff, as is her usual
habit, and as she pads across the room, she’s more naked than the day she was born
(being, as she is, one of those rare babies who came into the world fully encased in a caul).
Upon reaching the window, the cause of the ruckus is immediately obvious to Ursula; one of
the Angel Oak’s sturdy branches is thumping against her third-floor window. Strong winds
whip through the tree, making it shimmy and shake, giving the impression that it’s
espousing the old adage to dance like no one’s watching, a quality that rather has to be
admired in a tree. Either that, or it’s trembling uncontrollably with fear.
The forest, encroaching at the garden’s boundary, looks disquieted. It hangs its head low,
bowing to a master who’s ordered it to bend the knee. As the charcoal sky churns, not a
bird to be seen, the trees in the wood whisper incessantly. Whether they’re secrets or
warnings, Ursula can’t tell, which only unsettles her further.
That infernal billboard that the city recently erected across from the manor property—with
its aggressive gigantic lettering shouting, ‘Critchley Hackle Mega Complex Coming
Soon!’—snaps in the wind, issuing small cracks of thunder. A storm is on its way, that much
is clear. You don’t need to have Ivy’s particular powers to know as much.
Turning her back on the ominous view, Ursula heads for the calendar to mark off another
mostly sleepless night. It seems impossible that after so many of them—night upon night,
strung up after each other seemingly endlessly—only two remain until Ruby’s return, upon
which Ursula will discover her fate.
Either Ruby knows or she doesn’t.
And if she does know, there’s the chance that she’ll want nothing more to do with Ursula.
The thought makes her breath hitch, the accompanying stab of pain almost too much to
bear. The best she can hope for under the circumstances is that Ruby will forgive her,
releasing Ursula from the invisible prison her guilt has sentenced her to.
Too preoccupied with thoughts of Ruby to remember to don her robe, Ursula takes a seat
at her mahogany escritoire. She lights a cone of mugwort and sweet laurel incense,
watching as the tendril of smoke unfurls, inscribing itself upon the air. Inhaling the sweet
scent, she picks up a purple silk pouch and unties it, spilling the contents onto her palm.
The tarot cards are all frayed around the edges, worn down from countless hours spent
jostling through Ursula’s hands. Despite their shabbiness, they crackle with electricity,
sparks flying as she shuffles them. After cutting the deck in three, Ursula begins laying the
cards down, one after the other, on top of the heptagram she carved into the writing desk’s
surface almost eighty years ago.
The first card, placed in the center, is The Tower. Unfortunate souls tumble from the top
of a fortress that’s been struck by lightning, flames engulfing it. Ursula experiences a jolt of
alarm at the sight of it for The Tower has to signify the manor; and anything threatening
their home, threatens them all.
The second card, placed above the first at the one o’clock position, can only represent
Tabitha. It’s the Ten of Swords, depicting a person lying face down with ten swords buried
in their back. The last time Ursula saw the card, she’d made a mental note to make an
appointment with her acupuncturist, but now, following so soon after The Tower, it makes
her shift nervously.
The third, fourth and fifth cards, placed at the three o’clock, four-thirty and six o’clock
positions, depict a person (who must be Queenie) struggling under too heavy a load; a
heart pierced by swords (signifying Ursula); and a horned beast towering above a man and
woman who are shackled together (obviously Jezebel). Ursula whimpers to see so many
dreaded cards clustered together.
Moving faster now, she lays out the sixth, seventh and eighth cards at the seven-thirty,
nine and eleven o’ clock positions. Ursula gasps as she studies the man crying in his bed,
nine swords hovering above him (which can only denote Ursula’s guilt as it pertains to
Ruby); the armored skeleton on horseback (representing the town of Critchley Hackle); and
the two bedraggled souls trudging barefoot through the snow (definitely Ivy). Taking in all
eight sinister cards makes Ursula tremble much like the Angel Oak.
Based on the spread, Ursula absolutely should sound the alarm immediately, but she’s
made mistakes in the past—lapses in judgment that resulted in terrible consequences—and
so she wants to be a hundred percent certain first.
She shuffles the cards again, laying them down more deliberately this time, only to see
the exact same shocking formation, the impending threat even more vivid than before. It
couldn’t be any clearer if the Goddess herself had sent a homing pigeon with a memo
bearing the message: Calamity is on its way! It’s knocking at the window, just waiting to be
let in!
And yet, Ursula still doesn’t sound the alarm, because that’s what doubt does; it slips
through the chinks in our defenses, eroding all sense of self until the only voice that should
matter becomes the one that we don’t recognize anymore, the one we trust the least.
As a result of this estrangement from herself, Ursula has developed something of a
compulsion, needing to triple check the signs before she calls attention to them, and so she
stands and grabs her wand. She makes her way down the hallway past Ruby’s and
Jezebel’s bedrooms at a bit of a clip before descending the west wing stairs.
It’s just before she reaches Ivy’s glass conservatory that Ursula breaks out into a
panicked run.
Excerpted from The Witches of Moonshyne Manor @ 2022 by Bianca Marais, used with permission by
MIRA Books.
About the Author:
Bianca Marais cohosts the popular podcast The Sh*t No One Tells You About Writing, aimed at emerging
writers. She was named the winner of the Excellence in Teaching Award for Creative Writing at the
University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies in 2021. She is the author of two novels, Hum If You
Don’t Know the Words and If You Want to Make God Laugh, as well as the Audible Original The Prynne
Viper. She lives in Toronto with her husband and fur babies.
Social Links:
Social Links:
Author website: https://www.biancamarais.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/biancamaraisauthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/biancam_author/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/biancamarais_author/
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