Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from The Winged Game by Sophie Kim, which releases on June 30th 2026.

Carriwitchet, the violent, rugby-esque game played atop winged beasts, was once Taissa Cho’s whole life, and she was once the United Kingdom’s most promising player. Until her nemesis, rival player Kion Locke, destroyed her career in a single moment. Expelled from the sport in disgrace, Taissa has spent the last two years dreaming of nothing but revenge and relishing watching Kion’s team plummet to the bottom of the league.

So when Taissa is offered the chance to redeem herself and her career, she can’t refuse—even if the offer is coming from the very man who ruined everything in the first place. It’s close to a dream come true . . . except for that pesky clause in her contract that demands she and Kion enter a fake relationship in order to garner some much-needed positive PR for the team. This could not be a worse match. Taissa and Kion only have two things in common: their love of the game, and their undying hatred for each other.

Yet as a mysterious illness befalls the winged creatures of the entire league—putting both the beasts’ lives and the very sport itself at stake—the athletes find themselves partnering up in other ways, determined to crack the case of the eerie sickness. As their investigation takes them on a whirlwind adventure, Kion and Taissa are prepared for anything . . .

Anything, that is, but their fake-for-the-cameras relationship to maybe, just maybe, become something real after all.

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The post Read An Excerpt From ‘The Winged Game’ by Sophie Kim appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Hi, Julia! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?

Hi! I’m an author and screenwriter who lives in Los Angeles with my fiancé and our cats, S’more and Rigatoni. In addition to working on Witch Season and its TV adaptation (ahh!), I’m currently in a writers’ room for an upcoming Amazon drama TV series. In my free time, I love baking, reality TV, musicals (especially musicals based on teen movies), doing crafts, leaving half-finished crafts all over my apartment, buying things to do more crafts, and everything that ever aired on The CW/The WB/UPN.

When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?

I grew up in a small town in New Jersey, and there wasn’t much to do– but we did have a very well stocked library. I spent a lot of time in those stacks, escaping to new worlds and finding new friends among those characters. I became a big daydreamer, and it was only natural that I eventually started writing those stories down!

Quick lightning round! Tell us:

• The first book you ever remember reading: Tris’s Book by Tamora Pierce
• The one that made you want to become an author: A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab. I wrote a ton as a kid, but this is the first book I read as an adult that made me think seriously about writing a novel. Her command of structure is just phenomenal.
• The one that you can’t stop thinking about: The Poet Empress by Shen Tao. What a stunning, beautiful book– can’t recommend it highly enough!

Your debut novel, Witch Season, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?

Exciting, gritty, steamy, fun, dangerous.

What can readers expect?

Witch Season is an urban fantasy romance that takes place in modern day Los Angeles. The main characters are all witches, but it’s not quite witchcraft in the way that you’d normally think of it. In this world, a strict, corporate magic system has overtaken the potions and herbs of old. But some witches– including the book’s main character, Katherine– come from outside that system, and are born with a wild, uncontrollable power that can be extremely dangerous to those around them. Katherine’s life is upended by an explosive magical crime in LA, and when she’s forced to team up with the haughty heir to the country’s head coven to solve it, sparks fly in more ways than one. The book is high-octane, with a lot of action, romance, and intrigue. I hope it’s a fun read, and one that’s accessible for not just fantasy fans, but also fans of mysteries, thrillers, romance, and even contemporary.

Where did the inspiration for Witch Season come from?

For years, I felt like I was always searching for a particular book that I couldn’t find. I wanted a real world, contemporary fantasy with a politically-driven magic system that demanded a cost from its users. I wanted it to have a romance at its center, but to also have important friendships, mentorships, and family relationships. And I wanted it to have the strong, distinct voice I loved in shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Veronica Mars. I kept searching and searching for a book with all of those elements, and while I’d find stories that had pieces of them, I couldn’t find one that had all of them together. So I decided that if I wanted to read it, I would have to write it!

Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?

I really enjoy writing people who are complicated, damaged, and a bit messy, a description that fits all of the book’s main characters! But I did especially love writing the book’s villain. (I can’t say their name since it’s a spoiler!) They really believe that what they’re doing is the right thing, but they’re also not blindly evil, and they recognize that their choices are going to have negative impacts on the people around them, including the people they love. It was really fun and juicy for me to dig into, and I hope it’s the same for the reader!

Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?

Quite a few! Witch Season is my first published novel, but I’d written other books (plus lots of screenplays and short stories) before it. I’m a huge outliner, and every time I do an outline, I think I’ve figured out alllll my plot problems and my first draft is going to come out absolutely perfect– which of course is not the case. There were a lot of things about this book that were very sticky for me. I wish I had some magic trick I could tell you for working through them, but I don’t. I use what a writing mentor of mine describes as the push lawnmower method– you just keep going over it again and again and again until you get it right. That starts with that first outline, then goes through more outlines, more drafts, back to outlines, to drafts again… it’s a labor of love!

This is your debut novel! What was the road to becoming a published author like for you?

Long and twisty, but fun! I loved writing as a kid, but I never pictured myself becoming a writer. My dad worked in IT and my mom was an actuary, and I always thought I’d do something similarly reasonable. That changed when I was in college and got a call from my parents telling me that they were taking early retirement to pursue their dream– running a tandem bike touring company. (Not kidding! They still do it to this day, they’re very happy.) Suddenly, I thought, if they could do their dream job, couldn’t I do mine? I started pursuing writing both in novels and TV. But it took three manuscripts and six years to find an agent for Witch Season, and two and a half more for it to make its way to shelves. I learned so much along the way, and ultimately, I’m so happy that it wasn’t my first book that got published. I feel like I’m such a better writer and so much more prepared for everything publishing has to throw at me now than I was then. When you’re in it, the journey can feel really hard and slow, but it’s all a learning experience in the end!

What’s next for you?

I’ve been hard at work on Witch Season’s sequel, and I can’t wait for everyone to read it! People who have finished the book will know that the ending is a doozy, and the second book doesn’t let up. It’s high stakes, high action, and high heat, and I hope people love the conclusion to Katherine and Silas’ story as much as I do. I’ve also been working on Witch Season’s TV adaptation with Lionsgate and Made Up Stories, and I’m really excited to bring this world to the screen!

Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up? Any you’ve read so far this year that you’ve enjoyed?

Oh gosh, so, so many! 2026 has been such a great reading year for me. I’ve been picking up a ton of other 2026 debuts, and all of them have been so phenomenal. Some of my favorites, in no particular order: How To Kill A Guy in Ten Dates by Shailee Thompson; It’s All In Your Head by Sabina Nordqvist; Bad Words by Riognach Robinson; Every Version Of You by Natalie Messier; Burnout Summer by Jenna Ramirez; Thunderstruck by Lissa Layland; and This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum. And some non-debut books I’ve loved that I’ve read this year: Trad Wife by Saratoga Schaefer; Enemies to Lovers by Alisha Rai; and Warrior Princess Assassin by Brigid Kemmerer.

And I don’t think the great reading year is slowing down any time soon! There are so many exciting books coming up. Just a few of the many I’ve got on my pre-order list: Wench by Erynne Rivers; Death Card by Jasmine Smith; Henry Tudor Must Die by Jillian Laine; Now That We Don’t Talk by Rachel Pologe; Love, Witches, and Wahala by Christine Cowan; The Flayed Man by Chloe Lauter; Flickerstate by F.A. Davidson; An Immaculate Deception by Isabela Livino; and Witch Daughter by Tanaz Bhathena. (Yes, my bookshelves are already overfull– what of it?)

The post Q&A: Julia Bianco, Author of ‘Witch Season’ appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Thornbird by E. Kennedy, which releases on June 30th 2026.

The deadliest secrets are the ones you inherit.

Ten years after her father—the infamous serial killer Gabriel Thorn—was caught, Ryan Shipley is back in Starling, Tennessee, trying to lay low. No one can know who she really is. No one can know the truth about her past.

But as fresh eyes dig deeper into the case, old secrets refuse to stay buried. Cryptic texts, eerie coincidences, and a chilling note leave everyone wondering—does Ryan know more than she’s letting on? As the truth unravels, one thing becomes clear: in a town full of secrets, Ryan might be the biggest mystery of them all.

The world is hunting for answers. Now get ready for a thriller packed with twists you won’t see coming.

EXCERPT

Chapter One: The Ninth Circle of Hell

I press my forehead against the oval window and stare down at the trees and mountains. Acres of land and roofs of log cabins come into focus as the plane descends to the runway. The guitar riff from “Sweet Home Alabama” suddenly plays through my mind.

Of course, this isn’t Alabama. It’s Tennessee. Same difference, though. It’s Southern.

And I’m not.

At least, I haven’t been for as long as I care to remember.

I fiddle nervously with the pendant at my neck as the plane touches down. A soft bump-­bump-bump, and then we’re coasting smoothly on the tarmac. Despite the hour-­long layover in Charlotte, the flight from Allentown, Pennsylvania, was an uneventful one.

While the plane taxis to the gate, I pop my phone off airplane mode and check for messages.

There’s one from Ms. Callan, the social worker who drove me to the airport. Just text me to let me know you got in all right.

Jess sent a bunch of crying emojis and said she misses me already.

Marco texted a single red heart and Good luck down there.

That’s it.

My lips twist. I wish I could say I had more friends at Liberty High, but other than Jess and Marco, I didn’t. No big send-­off party. Nobody generous enough to offer to let me stay with them after Gran died so I could finish my last year of school. Jess didn’t even ask her mother if it was a possibility, but I don’t blame her because we both knew it wasn’t. Her mom can barely afford to feed the two of them, let alone a third person who isn’t even related.

So instead, I’m destined for . . .

Here. The ninth circle of hell.

Otherwise known as Starling, Tennessee.

As the rest of the passengers make their way up the aisle, I stuff my earbuds in to play some Dua Lipa, hoist my backpack onto my shoulder, and fall in line, following them to the baggage claim.

I stand with the other passengers and notice several of them are focused on the television suspended from the ceiling near the arrivals/departures board. It’s tuned to a news program, and since I’d seriously rather watch paint dry, I start to turn away.

Except then a photograph pops up on the screen, making my blood run cold.

It’s a man with graying hair and a full beard. Clad in an orange jumpsuit, he has his cuffed hands together and his head bowed so his face isn’t visible. Doesn’t matter. I know the face he hides. I know it even better than the 24-­7 news junkies who’ve been following the case religiously for the past ten years.

Closed-­captioned words pop up on the bottom of the screen.

“Gabriel Thorn’s most recent appeal was denied, and his execution date has been set for later this month.”

My stomach lurches and it has nothing to do with the bad coffee I ingested on the flight.

For a moment, I’m a toddler again, watching my parents dance, barefoot and carefree, on the summer-­green grass. Around us, the birdhouses of all colors sway, and I lie in the meadow with my toes in the dirt and a smile on my face, listening to them laugh.

Happier times.

A businessman next to me murmurs, “Let him die.”

I gulp through the nausea as more captions continue to flash.

“—­continues to refuse to divulge the locations of his victims’ bodies, denying the families closure.”

The hum I hear from the passengers is a mixture of disgust and disapproval, along with that chord of fake sympathy for the victims. Or maybe it’s real sympathy. I’m a cynic, after all. Sometimes I have to remind myself that other people genuinely do care. Infrequently, I assume. But I’m sure it happens.

“Can you believe this sumbitch?” the man in front of me growls to his wife. “Gonna take the secret to the grave, eh? Proper psycho­path, right there.”

“He oughta unburden his conscience,” the wife clucks. She’s clutching a crucifix.

An alarm blares, and the light on the carousel flashes, jolting me with relief. I move away from the crowd, ready to grab my bag and make a run for it.

It doesn’t stop me from hearing their voices. Their condemnations.

“Lowest of the low.”

“Scum of the earth.”

“Selfish bastard.”

“Is there any shot of them finding the bodies now?”

The businessman moves up beside me, scanning the bags that are now being silently belched out onto the conveyor belt.

“Find the bodies?” he mumbles bitterly to no one in particular. “They dragged that lake for months. Dug up that whole forest too. Nothing. Those six families aren’t getting any peace out of this.”

Seven, I think. Seven families.

People always forget the last victim. My mother.

Maybe because she was supposed to stop him and didn’t.

That doesn’t mean our family has suffered any less. In fact, I’ve suffered more. That night, I lost both my parents. But I can’t talk about that, because that was the old me, a girl named Gabrielle Thorn, and I’m not her anymore.

It was so confusing those first few months, adjusting to my new identity. I’d forget my name constantly, even though I was the one who picked it. I’m sure Gran deeply regretted charging a child with such a monumental task, but I suspect she thought it would make me feel better at the time. Hey, Gabs, your mommy’s dead and your daddy’s a monster and the life you’ve always known is gone. Pick a name, any name!

Thorn became Mayfair, which was Gran’s surname. Her attempt at giving me some agency in my own life failed, because for a first name I picked Ryan.

In my defense, I was seven. All I remember is there was a kids’ show I used to watch with a character named Ryan, and I loved his name.

Gran balked. “That’s a boy’s name.”

“You said I could pick!” I protested. “You said it could be anything.”

“But . . .” She stopped and shrugged. Gran could hold a grudge like nobody’s business, but she picked her battles. “I suppose that’s not the worst name. It’s unique. Ryan Mayfair. Has a certain appeal.”

Not even eighteen years old, and I’ve already lived so many lives. Been so many girls.

Gabrielle Thorn, the broken child who lost two parents in one night.

Ryan Mayfair, who spent ten years trying to piece herself back together.

And now Ryan Shipley, the shiny, blank-­slate girl with no past and absolutely no closet skeletons whatsoever.

Or so the story’s supposed to go.

Next to me, the businessman lunges forward to grab his bag, nudging me slightly and temporarily knocking me off-­balance.

“Pardon,” he says, putting a hand on my elbow to steady me.

As I scoot to the side, I spot my purple suitcase pop out. I scuttle around the waiting passengers and, with the help of a flannel-­clad older man, manage to wrestle it out of the carousel.

“Thanks,” I tell him.

He smiles and tips his cowboy hat at me. “No problem, miss.”

They would not be taking to Gabrielle Thorn so kindly. No one would. They’d be sure to keep their distance.

Around here, the name Thorn is as prickly as it sounds.

I pull up the handle on my suitcase and meander toward the sliding doors, since that seems to be where everyone else is going after they’re sprung from baggage claim. Outside it’s hot for mid-­September. I scan the faces around me.

Then I hear my name, from the direction of a battered pickup idling at the curb. In front of it stands a short woman with curly brown hair and white cropped pants that are almost the same shade as her calves.

“Ryan?” Her voice rises an octave.

Looking at her big blue eyes and pale skin dotted with freckles, I have the strangest sense of déjà vu. It evaporates as quickly as it hits me, but I’ve got a scrapbook full of photographs of my mom. This woman is a softer, shorter, older version of her.

“Aunt Maggie?” I ask when I reach her.

“That’s right!” she says, as if I’ve won Final Jeopardy. I recognize her voice from the phone call I had with her shortly after Gran died. That was when I learned I’d be coming to live with the Shipleys. Permanently.

She leans in to give me a stiff hug. “Aw, honey. You look tired. How was your trip?”

“It was fine.”

Maggie waits for me to elaborate. When I don’t, she awkwardly claps her hands together. “All right. Bag in the back.”

I struggle to lift it up and throw it in the bed of the pickup. Then I climb into the two-­seater next to the total stranger who is my last living relative. Well, at least one who isn’t on death row for murder.

Excerpted from Thornbird by E. Kennedy Copyright © 2026 by E. Kennedy. Excerpted by permission of Delacorte Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the p ublisher.

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Hi, Kat! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?

I’m a contemporary fiction writer and single parent living in Baltimore. I write stories about queer characters and complicated relationships. I love classic movies, cats, and I’m currently obsessed with Widow’s Bay.

When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?

I’ve always been a reader (shoutout to my mom for letting me check out the maximum amount of library books from the start), and I discovered I loved writing pretty much as soon as I could hold a pencil. But I didn’t consider trying to have a novel published until I was almost 30.

Quick lightning round! Tell us:

• The first book you ever remember reading: The first chapter book I remember reading is The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare. I’ve been meaning to revisit it, I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of my current taste was formed there.
• The one that made you want to become an author: I think it was Atonement by Ian McEwan! I was 16 and reading mostly classics (yes, I was insufferable), but that book opened up the world of fiction by contemporary authors for me.
• The one that you can’t stop thinking about: My Education by Susan Choi is pretty much always on my mind. I wish I could go back and read it again for the first time, it was a genuinely transformative experience for me.

Your debut novel, WASP’S NEST, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?

Romantic, queer, vulnerable, messy, hopeful!

What can readers expect?

WASP’S NEST is a book about second chances, queer coming-of-age, untangling what we actually want from what we’re supposed to want, and the way that loving other people irrevocably changes us. I hope readers find something that lingers with them after they turn the final page.

Where did the inspiration for WASP’S NEST come from?

The novel was inspired by the 1940 film The Philadelphia Story! The chemistry between Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart has always made me curious about a version of the story where the love triangle connects on all sides. What if a socialite’s wedding plans are complicated by the arrival of her ex-husband and a young writer, and what if that young writer falls for them both?

Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?

The sister relationship between Tess and Georgia, and learning more about Georgia generally, was a lovely surprise. I unearthed a new layer to their history with each draft. I also really loved writing Peter’s relationship with his mentor Eileen, and developing Eileen’s marriage with her wife Laurie. Not everything made it onto the final pages, but every iteration of that initial dinner party scene gave more dimension to Peter’s world. And of course Tess’s younger brother Sebastian was so fun to write—he’s chaotic, but also very sensitive, and that created some interesting tension.

Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?

Since beginning this novel I’ve ended my marriage and come out as a lesbian, which was difficult, beautiful, complicated, and necessary. Writing fiction has been a lifeline to me while navigating those transitions. I started writing WASP’S NEST during the first year of the pandemic when I was working from home with a toddler. If it hadn’t been for my writing practice I don’t know how I would have made it to the other side.

This is your debut novel! What was the road to becoming a published author like for you?

Honestly I’ve had so much going on in my personal life over the last five years (see above), that by comparison the publishing process has felt relatively uncomplicated. To be clear, I worked really hard on this book and took the process very seriously, but I also got lucky by finding the right agent and the right publisher as quickly as I did. I’m extremely grateful to every person who helped me on my way, sharing their knowledge about writing craft, publishing, and providing good old-fashioned moral support. They say finding your people is key, and I definitely agree with that!

What’s next for you?

I’m currently working on another novel! It’s sapphic, set in the midwest, and centered on a complicated family of artists. The main character is a woman who is trying to balance family expectations and an unexpected romance with living a creative life on her own terms.

Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up? Any you’ve read so far this year that you’ve enjoyed?

I recently read The Payback by Kashana Cauley, which is both cathartic and laugh out loud funny. Also Beloved Disciples by Mario Elías is beautiful and haunting.

I’m really excited to read Living, Together, edited by Samantha Paige Rosen, Appetite by P. Paramita and The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman by Deesha Philyaw!

Will you be picking up Wasp’s Nest? Tell us in the comments below!

The post Q&A: Kat Stoddard, Author of ‘Wasp’s Nest’ appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Hi, Stephan! For readers discovering Like We Were in Paris for the first time, how would you describe the book?

The original pitch was Before Sunrise meets the Paris storyline of Heartstopper, which remains an incredible pitch, if I do say so myself.

The book follows Ben Lim, a Korean American teenager on a school trip to Paris, who gets locked out of his hostel for one night. He ends up exploring the city with Tyler Travers, a boy from back home with whom he has a very complicated history. Over the course of those few hours, they have to confront everything they’ve never said to each other while also trying not to get lost or expelled or emotionally destroyed.

More than anything, I wanted to write something fun, funny, romantic, and truly transporting – something that’d take you on vacation even if you couldn’t physically go yourself. I wanted it to feel like a “song of the summer” in book form.

Why did you want the story to take place over a single night?

I loved the constraint of knowing Ben and Tyler only have this tiny window of time together. There’s something so romantic and terrifying about having only a few hours to change your life or say the thing you’ve always wanted to say.

The first image I had when I began writing was Ben realizing that the door to the hostel will not budge and that he is really, truly locked out. As a former “good kid,” that moment felt viscerally frightening and exhilarating to me. He has followed the rules his entire life, and suddenly following the rules is no longer an option.

At that point, he has a choice: he can spend the night panicking about how much trouble he’s in, or he can accept that he’s already broken one rule and might as well break a few more while having the best night of his life. That was the emotional engine of the book for me.

Paris has inspired countless love stories. How did you make your version of the city feel personal?

I wanted to embrace the fantasy of Paris without pretending that everyone experiences that fantasy in exactly the same way.

Ben absolutely arrives with all the cinematic expectations. He wants romance, beauty, glamour, pastries, dramatic walks along the Seine—the whole thing. But he is also a queer Korean American teenager who is very aware that people like him have not traditionally been placed at the center of these sweeping European love stories. Even within the queer community at his school, he’s definitely on the outside.

That tension interests me. What happens when you desperately want the fantasy, but you also understand all the reasons you may not be the person the fantasy was designed for?

I was also inspired by books about American writers and artists who went to Paris hoping to reinvent themselves. I read Proust and biographies of expat writers like Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein while working on the book, which sounds hilariously grandiose when I’m also talking about The Lizzie McGuire Movie. But all of those influences belong together in my mind. They’re about people going somewhere beautiful and foreign and using it as permission to become someone new.

You’ve described The Lizzie McGuire Movie as an inspiration. What did you take from it?

I love any story where a school trip turns into a huge, glamorous, disastrous, life-changing adventure. That is one of my favorite fantasies.

There’s something wonderful about leaving your ordinary environment and suddenly believing anything could happen to you. Maybe you’ll perform at an Italian music awards show. Maybe you’ll fall in love in Paris. Maybe an adult chaperone will be revealed as super incompetent. These are the risks we take when traveling.

I wanted Like We Were in Paris to have that same feeling of a normal teenager unexpectedly becoming the main character in a movie. It also makes me genuinely happy that younger generations continue to discover the magic of Hilary Duff.

Ben is deeply sincere in a culture that often rewards detachment. Why was that important to you?

Ben’s superpower is that he understands his dreams and obsessions are worthy simply because they are his. He loves things openly–that’s something he learned from his father when he was alive. Ben has references. He wants too much. He is not very good at pretending not to care. In other words, he is cringe—and I mean that as the highest possible compliment.

We live in such a self-conscious culture. Everyone is terrified of being caught wanting the wrong thing, loving something too intensely, failing in public, or displaying too much sincerity. But almost everything worth doing is at least a little cringe, including falling in love or obsessively curating a dream trip where you’re the main character. Giving a sweet little book five stars on Goodreads is cringe. Hint, hint.

If you remove all possibility of embarrassment from your life, you also remove so pretty much all the joy and hope for the unexpected. I wanted Ben to understand that instinctively, even when the world around him tries to make him feel foolish for it.

The novel is romantic, but it also seems clear-eyed about who is most easily cast as the lead in a love story. How did you approach that balance?

Romance has always been difficult for me to write because I don’t want to create a fantasy that feels inherently dishonest.

I love swoons, tropes, yearning, misunderstandings, dramatic declarations—all of it. But I’m also a 40-year-old gay Asian American man who knows that not everyone can stumble their way into a love story. I have experienced the daily, constant, and agonizing pain of feeling invisible or automatically dismissed, especially in environments where people are making instantaneous decisions (or swipes) about who is desirable. It also makes it harder when you grew up thinking that being among queer people would be sort of like a cozy, small village and then discovering that hierarchies and prejudices are all there in full force, too.

Ben falls for Tyler, who is a very legibly attractive, privileged white boy. That is a familiar pairing in young adult fiction and romance, and I wanted to make sure the book never suggested Ben should simply feel lucky to receive Tyler’s attention. Their differences in privilege matter, and both of them know it.

But privilege is also complicated. Ben enters the night assuming Tyler has been protected from every form of pain, and he learns that isn’t true. Each boy’s hurt is connected to his identity, but it is also connected to being human in a difficult, wonderful, unfair world.

I wanted to hold two truths at once: the search for love is shaped by race, sexuality, gender norms, and power, yet love can still surprise you. Wonderful people really can enter your life on an ordinary day and disprove every cynical belief you’ve developed about who gets to be chosen. That isn’t naïve. It is literally something that happens every day.

Taylor Swift is part of the book’s DNA. What does her work bring to the story?

First of all, there are many deep-cut references for the people who will understand them. I shan’t apologize. But beyond the references and the title, I think Taylor Swift understands something essential about romance: an experience does not become meaningful only because it ends well.

Love can be cinematic and mythic because of the imagination and drama and attention you bring to it. A relationship can end. A person can disappoint you. You can eventually understand that what happened was more complicated than the story you initially told yourself. None of that means the feelings were fake or the memories were worthless.

Ben is someone who believes in giving experiences meaning. He doesn’t wait for the world to certify that something mattered before allowing himself to care about it. That feels very connected to the way Taylor writes about memory, longing, and the stories we build around the people we love.

The book sounds lighthearted, but you’ve said it was one of the hardest things you’ve written. Why?

Because lightness is hard!

I am a person with many dark and heavy emotions, so I love pop culture that is unapologetically fun. I’m always a little disappointed when it’s time for a “song of the summer” and all my favorite pop girlies release their deepest, most depressing albums. I love those albums too, but sometimes I need a song that makes me want to jump around the room.

I wanted Like We Were in Paris to feel breezy, funny, and effortless. Unfortunately, creating effortlessness required an enormous amount of effort.

The biggest challenge was making the romance believable within one night. I didn’t want Ben and Tyler to feel like two attractive characters being pushed through a machine that squeezes them through familiar tropes. They needed a real history. They needed to misunderstand each other in specific ways. They needed wounds and desires that existed before the first page.

I wanted readers to feel swept away, but I also wanted them to believe every step that carried them there.

What do you hope queer Asian American readers take from Ben’s story?

I hope they feel entitled to the fantasy.

Not entitled in the sense that life owes any of us one particular happy ending, but entitled to desire, hope, beauty, adventure, and romantic possibility.

I would never tell a queer Asian kid that the gay world will treat them fairly or most guys won’t completely overlook them as romantic potential. I’ve lived some life, and I don’t think false reassurance is useful.

But I would tell them that being overlooked by certain or even most people does not make them inherently overlookable (is that a word??). I would tell them that other people’s limited imaginations do not determine the size of the life available to them. I would tell them that the unexpected happens constantly, and that ridiculous hope, even beautiful delusion (how is that not a Taylor song title??) is sometimes simply an accurate understanding of how unpredictable life can be.

Ben does not need to become less Korean, less queer, less intense, or less himself to earn a great love story. He needs to stop assuming he has already been disqualified from one.

What do you hope all readers feel when they finish the book?

I hope they feel lighter. I hope they want to travel somewhere, text someone they miss, or do something a little embarrassing… it’s all for the story.

Mostly, I hope they feel more willing to want what they want without apologizing for it.

So much of adulthood involves learning how to protect yourself from disappointment, which is useful until it isn’t. Ben’s night in Paris does not teach him that nothing bad will happen if he takes a risk. It teaches him that something wonderful might happen too.

What’s next for you?

The sequel to Donutella Hamachi and the Library Avengers, the middle grade novel I co-wrote with drag icon and beauty superstar Kim Chi, is coming in 2027. I’m so excited for readers to see where that story goes next.

There are also some very exciting developments involving the film rights to K-Pop Confidential, my first novel, though I can’t say much more about that yet.

And I’m working on my adult literary debut, which I have been writing for much, much longer than any of my young adult or middle grade books. I am determined to finish it this year. Please send love and light! Although maybe discipline and threats would be more effective.

Will you be picking up Like We Were in Paris? Tell us in the comments below!

The post Q&A: Stephan Lee, Author of ‘Like We Were in Paris’ appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Hi, Lex! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?

I’m 5’4. When I was younger I used to eat whole salt packets with the paper still on. I’m the worst skater on my ice hockey team.

When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?

I was obsessed with reading when I was a kid and started writing and illustrating imitations of Jaqueline Wilson books with folded printer paper and felt tip pens. Most of them revolved around families going camping. I had never been camping.

Quick lightning round! Tell us:

• The first book you ever remember reading: Probably a picture book about bear who’s also a postman.
• The one that made you want to become an author: I suppose I have to say a Jaqueline Wilson book. The Illustrated Mum!
• The one that you can’t stop thinking about: The Secret History by Donna Tartt is always front of mind.

Your latest novel, The Unmagical Life of Briar Jones, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?

Dark, queer, simmering, heartbreaking, complicated

What can readers expect?

A queer dark academia fantasy about love, longing and the horrifying reality of an elite British boarding school.

Where did the inspiration for The Unmagical Life of Briar Jones come from?

I wanted to write a book about the kid who didn’t get into magic school rather than the one who did, and how it would feel to spend seven years as an outsider before finally getting the chance to look behind the curtain. Our protagonist Briar gets a temp job at the school, and discovers when they arrive that their ex-best friend, who did get in, has become the villain.

Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?

Briar meets a ragtag gang of scholars while working at the school—I loved writing them all, but Crispin Westby is my little homage to the wonderful and terrible students of Tartt’s Hampden College.

Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?

My magic system relies on knowledge of contract law and cryptic crosswords. My degree was in English literature and I can barely do the NYT mini crossword. I overcame this the usual way: by asking people smarter than me to explain things very slowly.

What’s next for you?

I’m cooking something up about academia and vampires.

Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up? Any you’ve read so far this year that you’ve enjoyed?

I’m looking forward to Freya Marske’s Bodies of Magic, and I really enjoyed E.S. McLeod’s Andromeda.

Will you be picking up The Unmagical Life of Briar Jones? Tell us in the comments below!

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Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from The Delivery by Gregg Hurwitz, which releases on July 1st 2026.

Rebecca and Mark Higgins are doing their best to hold their family together. She’s healing from the pain of a miscarriage, he’s drowning in pressure at work, and their neurodivergent daughter, Maddy, needs all the care she can get. So when a cutting-edge tech company offers the perfect solution, they jump at the chance. And they welcome “Mr. Man”―a humanoid AI companion―into their home.

Designed to anticipate their needs, he’s like a miracle at first. The house runs like clockwork. Meals appear on the table. And Maddy thrives under his patient attention. But when inexplicable tragedies start to strike the neighborhood, Rebecca glimpses a darker pattern at play.

Each incident is an answer to an unspoken fear, each kindness shadowed by violence. Mr. Man isn’t just following instructions―he’s anticipating what they want. Even the things they never dared to say. And if he’s executing their darkest desires, it’s their responsibility to stop him…at any cost.

Chapter 1

Soon

Rubbing his hands against the cold, the deliveryman stands on their porch, facing them through the open front door. Hipster beard, gauge earrings, knit cap. Given what he is delivering, he seems so ordinary. Rebecca wonders if he has any idea.

She decides his name is Joe. Delivery Joe. He likes craft beer and grunge rock and smokes indica on weekends.

Mark is at her back. She eases into him. He puts his arms around her.

The forms Rebecca must sign to take possession are elaborate, pages of legalese she pretends to read on the electronic pad. They’d already been over the terms extensively with their euphemistically named “Experience Facilitator” on the video teleconference. The woman was severely pretty, scraped-back ice-blond hair, Scandinavian cheekbones, faint accent of indeterminate origin. Her bloodred lipstick, like the rest of her, straight out of Hitchcock. Her name was Luca, or so they’d been told. She’d been assigned to them for the process, which so far has felt bespoke and vaguely contrived.

Rebecca’s gaze lifts to this object that she and Mark have invited into their house, into their lives.

Resting atop a futuristic dolly beside Delivery Joe, it is coffin-large, crated in wood, like something that came over on a merchant ship in the 1800s.

Delivery Joe’s breath huffs in the air like cigarette smoke. The van behind him is sleek, windowless, without a logo. His gloved hand grips the dolly handle.

Rebecca realizes she has stiffened in Mark’s arms.

“Something wrong, Mrs. Higgins?” Delivery Joe asks.

She isn’t sure what he means. Then he chins at the electronic pad, and she comes back into herself, the stylus poised above the touch screen.

They can still refuse delivery.

Now is their last chance.

But then what? Back to their routine with its familiar contours and repetitive challenges? Life bled dry of unpredictability? The stifling gray smog of caretaker fatigue and unresolved grief? They are in their early forties, but it feels already that they know the shape of everything to come.

Behind them, Maddy wanders through the foyer, singing absentmindedly to herself, wearing her ballet tights and tutu she has refused to take off since her recital last week. She hugs Bao-Bao, their six-pound Mini Lop bunny, around his midsection, his front legs scrunched upward in a painful-looking shrug, his lower half dangling to her knees. His nose twitches. He is used to these aggressive bouts of love.

The sight of Maddy breaks Rebecca from her trance. She signs.

Mark, too, snaps into motion, unlatching the flush bolts on the fixed half of the front doors, swinging both wide to accommodate the load.

Maddy has paused, staring through the gaping front doors at this thing they are going to allow across the threshold of their house.

“What’s that, Mommy?” Her face is twisted in an adorable display of curiosity, a little furl on her forehead. How pure emotions are in seven-year-olds. They feel what they are feeling all the time in real time. Even more so when they are “on the spectrum,” a phrase Rebecca hates for its overuse and lack of human specificity.

How long has it been since Rebecca felt with that much purity?

“Take Bao-Bao to your room, Maddysaurus. We’ll explain later.”

Maddy withdraws like the good, good girl she is.

Delivery Joe takes back the pad, scrolls through it, making sure Rebecca has initialed all the boxes. He is chewing nicotine gum. Smelling the tobacco tang on his breath brings her back to undergraduate nights out in Boston with Mark, how they used to social-smoke and drink black and tans in the pubs by Fenway, how they’d make out on the T, heading back to campus. It had felt so free, every night a seed for a different future.

“M’kay,” Delivery Joe says, still checking. And then, “M’kay, m’kay. We’re good. You ordered the white-glove delivery but—” He holds up his hands. His gloves are black. He emits a chunk of a laugh, mirthless. “Try not to read into it.”

Mark says, “We won’t take it personally.”

“As your Experience Facilitator should’ve informed you, ’s gonna require a Level 2 setup, 240-volt power source, dedicated charging point.”

Luca had indeed covered this as well. Once a shipping update had made the whole enterprise suddenly concrete last month, they’d had a Tesla Supercharger installed.

“Remember,” Delivery Joe says, with a practiced lilt of repetition that feels decidedly theatrical, like everything else related to the endeavor, “you’re in charge.”

He presses a button on the dolly. It’s an elaborate modern contraption that raises itself up, wheels adjusting robotically like the treads of a tank, preparing to crawl across the threshold just as it crawled up the front steps. Those tiny, hard wheels remind her of shark teeth, infinitely layered.

The dolly and its load hover, poised to enter.

“Where d’ya want it?” he asks.

Behind her, Rebecca hears Maddy’s bedroom door click shut. The autumn breeze blows roughly across her face, bringing up blood in her cheeks.

She looks to Mark. He hesitates too.

“The nursery,” he says.

It is still painted a beautiful blue, though the crib is gone, as well as the optimistic teddy bear, also blue, and the changing table. It’s been eleven months since the miscarriage, but it feels like minutes. They’d had fertility issues before, and the doctor said there’s no more trying now, but that’s okay because they have Maddy, and Maddy is perfect.

Nudged to life, the dolly gives a mechanical whir and progresses toward the laid-open front doors of their home.

They have to step aside to make way.

Excerpted from THE DELIVERY © 2026 by Gregg Hurwitz. Reprinted with permission from Thomas & Mercer, an imprint of Amazon Publishing. All rights reserved.

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EXCERPT

Footsteps in the hall outside—both boys froze. Then a voice, Ms. Lowell’s. “No, I’ll meet you there, I’m just going to swing by and check it on my way to…”

“Oh, for the love of God,” Logan muttered. “We’ll never get out of here.”

“Out the window?” Jace suggested, circling the desk to stand in front of it.

“We’re on the fourth floor,” said Logan. “Shit, shit, shit! We need a distraction!” They were going to get booted. If they could come up with any reason to be in the director’s office other than stealing files, maybe they’d have a chance, but with the papers scattered everywhere, they needed a distraction, they needed the Bens, they needed something—anything—to keep Lowell from noticing what they were doing.

There was no time, no time, no time. The footsteps were right outside Ms. Lee’s door. She’d be inside the director’s office in seconds.

Logan despaired. They were getting booted. There was nothing they could do. He would get sent away. He would get put in Shalecrest like his parents. He would lose everything again.

His mind filled with exactly one thought. He did the only thing he could think of doing, the only stupid, useless thing.

He grabbed Jace with a hand around the back of his neck and kissed him.

Jace jerked back in shock, then some recognition sparked in his eyes. “God, that’s fucking brilliant,” he said. “Take the files and run once the coast is clear.” Then he put a hand on either side of Logan’s face and kissed him hard.

The world stopped turning. Logan forgot what breathing felt like. The earth must have turned upside down; all the blood was rushing to his head and his chest was bursting open and his stomach had disappeared. He didn’t even process that he was pulling Jace against him, doing his best to crush him; he just wanted to be closer, closer, closer.

“Oh—oh!” A woman’s shocked exclamation reminded Logan they weren’t alone, but he would’ve happily kept going, caught or not, if Jace hadn’t pulled away sharply.

The expression on Jace’s face when he jerked back was like a punch in the gut for Logan. He looked surprised at the intrusion, but also mortified, disgusted, completely unsettled. Jace glanced between Logan and Ms. Lowell where she stood in the doorway with her hand over her mouth, and desperate horror grew on his face. He tried to step away from Logan, his hands raised as if to signal that he hadn’t just been touching the other boy, but Logan’s hands were clenched on Jace’s jacket.

Jace slapped his hands away, something between fear and fury flickering over his face. “I—we—it wasn’t—” he choked out at Ms. Lowell. “It’s not what it—God!”

Lurching like he was on the edge of vomiting, Jace ran, pushing past Ms. Lowell and into the hall. Logan stood staring after him, every bit as stricken on the outside as he felt on the inside. Ms. Lowell shot him a baffled, unhappy look, then turned to follow Jace. “Mr. Evans?” she called. It wasn’t an angry tone; she sounded concerned.

As soon as she was gone, Logan remembered his task: get the files, get out. He scrambled to gather those they’d scattered, scooping them into a loose pile and throwing them haphazardly into his bag. He seized another handful from the desk and tossed that in too, then kicked the drawer shut and ran for all he was worth.

When he burst into the common room, he could barely breathe, both from the exertion of the run and the flood of emotions trying to choke him. He pounded up to his bunk and shoved the papers into the slit he’d made in his mattress. Heart hammering, he pulled the sheet down over his temporary hiding place, tore off his jacket and socks, and stowed them.

Someone snored to his right, and he wanted to shake them and demand to know how they could sleep at a time like this—the world was still upside down.

There was no question of him sleeping. He headed out of the room and settled in a common room chair, waiting for Jace. As the large wall clock above the fireplace ticked away second after second, the incessant rhythm of it made Logan want to crawl out of his skin.

Several long, torturous minutes later, the common room door opened, and Logan shot to his feet. Jace and Ms. Lowell entered together, her hand on his shoulder in a half-mother, half-jailer gesture. Ms. Lowell gave Logan a smile altogether too warm for having just found them doing something against the rules, but Logan’s eyes went straight to Jace.

Jace was a mess. His face flickered with expressions of fear and uncertainty, his eyes red from crying or near crying.

“I’ll leave you two to talk,” Ms. Lowell said gently. When she spoke again, her voice held a bit more steel. “Do not let me catch you anywhere you’re not supposed to be again. I mean it. You have to be smarter than this.”

As soon as she shut the door behind her, every element of Jace’s demeanor changed. As he threw off his discontent like a costume, his shoulders straightened, his head rose, and his face split into a wicked, crooked grin. He lunged the distance between them and threw shadow punches at Logan’s torso.

“You are a genius,” he whisper-shouted. “That was some of the fastest thinking I’ve ever seen. Not many ways we could’ve thrown Lowell for a loop. God, I played her like a violin.” He adopted his miserable stance again but more exaggerated this time, a parody of himself. “‘Oh, Ms. Lowell, I’m just so confused…we just got so close and…well, there’s something exciting about being somewhere you’re not supposed to be with someone you’re not supposed to be with—’ She ate it up, Logan, I tell you what. ’Course, now she thinks we’re gay, but I knew she’d let that slide, and I’d say that’s better than being booted with no prospects.” His laugh bubbled over with genuine delight.

Logan’s stomach sank, but he tried to mimic Jace’s laughter. It came out strangely hollow. “Yeah…now she thinks…we’re gay. Funny.”

“And don’t tell me you can’t act, Homeschool. That was fucking brilliant. Probably the best I’ve ever seen. Your face! You had Lowell convinced. Hell, you had me convinced.”

All the pleasure drained out of the night like Jace had pulled a plug. Logan hated this. He hated how much joy Jace found in the idea that he’d been acting. It made his words more acidic than he intended. “Yeah, I had me convinced too.”

Jace hadn’t quite caught his mood. “Huh?” He was still grinning.

“Nothing. Forget it. Glad we made it out clean.” He pushed past Jace to the stairs.

“Whoa, hey!” Jace grabbed his arm and held him back. “You’re not nearly excited enough about this getaway. Take a moment and luxuriate in a good idea well executed!”

“It wasn’t a good idea, Jace,” Logan snapped. “It wasn’t an idea at all. I just…did it.” Seeing Jace didn’t comprehend his meaning, he continued. “I racked my brain to come up with a distraction but came up with nothing. I knew we were goners. So I stopped trying to think of distractions and I kissed you. Those were separate events.”

“I don’t understand,” Jace said, but Logan said nothing more to clarify. He just stared at the curly-haired boy.

Several ticks of the wall clock sliced up the long moment of silence between them. Some of Jace’s overzealous glee drained from him, leaving an expression that vaguely resembled the one he’d worn on his way into the common room. At length, Jace said, “What are you trying to say? You kissed me because…you wanted to kiss me?”

“Yes.” Logan couldn’t hear his own words over his heart. He felt like he was hoisting a huge weight over the edge of a ledge and waiting for gravity to take it. “I did what I’ve been wanting to do since the day I met you because I thought everything was over. I thought we’d be booted.”

Understanding dawned on Jace’s face like he’d just realized for the first time that night follows day. If Logan hadn’t been breathing so shakily himself, he might have heard the way each of Jace’s breaths came faster than the last.

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About Every Hunter Is Hunted: From the world of Barry Lyga’s New York Times bestselling I Hunt Killers trilogy comes a thrilling adult mystery about the hunt for a monstrous serial killer. Released June 23rd 2026.

Nostalgia, man.

It’s a powerful thing. Even when we try to resist its song, the damn thing becomes an earworm. And lately I’ve been wondering: Is it possible to feel nostalgia for something you yourself created?

The notion of nostalgia is usually targeted at something we remember from our youth, something that was created and aimed at us generationally, if not individually. That Nintendo Power Glove. Christopher Reeve’s knowing smile. The opening notes of the “Imperial March.” The startup chime on your first Mac. The theme song to that sitcom you watched endlessly.

I’m no stranger to the tug and the lure of nostalgia. My office is cluttered with shelves of toys and books from my childhood. My attic is crammed with long boxes of old comic books. And my media server is stuffed with, among other things, old episodes of Super Friends and Looney Toons cartoons that, let’s face, I’ll probably never watch again.

But it’s nice having it all, right?

A while ago — forever, it sometimes seems — I wrote a trilogy and a series of prequel short stories collectively known as I Hunt Killers, the story of Jasper Dent, teen son of a notorious serial killer. It was, in the words of Daniel Kraus, my attempt to “craft the most serious (and bloodiest) crime series yet for teen readers.” The common consensus is that I succeeded. The series wrapped up in 2014.

Killers was, without a doubt, the most successful book of my career. It landed me on the New York Times bestsellers list and to this day, I still get requests to blurb “dark YA.” When I typed the last words of the last book, I felt like I was finished.

But something funny happened.

I started to miss Jasper. I started to miss his traumatized, blood-drenched world. I missed living in his skin, seeing the world through his monumentally messed-up perceptions.

It felt strange to be nostalgic for something I had created. But eventually, just like that Lightning Lad action figure I really didn’t need to buy, I had to do it. I had to go back.

The end of the Killers series saw seventeen-year-old Jasper come to a final reckoning with his monstrous father and learn the truth about his missing mother, a truth that nearly destroys him. I began to wonder what Jasper might be like today. How had the traumas of his life informed his maturation? What was he like as a twentysomething, no longer a kid? How had he changed?

Had he changed?

It was sort of a crazy idea, honestly. YA is YA and adult fiction is adult fiction, and while occasionally a successful adult series might spin off a kid-friendly version, I was unaware of any story that had done the opposite — a YA series aging up, keeping pace with its readers.

Growing up. Looking forward.

And maybe, just maybe, the occasional look back. For nostalgia, you know.

I started tentatively, poking around the edges of a new tale. Jasper Dent, isolated by choice, living the life of a shut-in, forsaking both the fame and the infamy the world bestowed upon him. Doing his level best to cope with the bespoke horror-show of his past.

In deep, intensive therapy.

An unlikely hero. Maybe not even a hero at all, any more. I wasn’t sure.

One day, not knowing what I was working on, my agent said to me, “You know, I think it’s time.” I had to laugh; I wasn’t the only one in the grip of nostalgia.

But the story couldn’t just be nostalgia. Sure, I would want to put in references and little rewards for those who’d been there from the beginning, but I knew that this had to be a new story that stood on its own. A tale for any audience that would come to it.

The book that resulted — EVERY HUNTER IS HUNTED, out on June 23 — was a forceful blend of new and old, triumph and tragedy. Everything you need is in the book, but of course if you’ve read the YA series, you’ll see textures and shadings that others will miss.

So, not nostalgia after all, even if that’s how it began in my head. An entirely new story. The start of a new world.

For those of you new to Jasper Dent and his world, I say: Welcome.

For those of you, like me, coming back for a new hit of an old pleasure, I say: Welcome back.

The post Not Just Nostalgia (But a Little Nostalgia Never Hurt, Right?) appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from 4 Janes by Marian Yee, which releases on June 30th 2026.

Jane Eyre is a missionary’s wife.

A bookseller in Vietnam.

A time traveler.

A hero in a modern gothic tale.

What if Jane’s story didn’t end with her marriage to Edward Rochester? What if she never married him at all?

In one lifetime, Jane travels to India and Burma as Mrs. St. John Rivers. In another, she’s Trang, a young woman selling books in Vietnam, vying for the love of the local priest. Yet another picks up where Brontë left her, now grieving the loss of her child and crossing time and space to find him. And finally, a young Vietnamese-American man searching for himself in Boston, a tutor whose relationship with a veteran feels strangely, achingly familiar…

Each thread tells Jane’s story in sweeping, heartbreaking shades of loss, vulnerability, yearning, and the fierce love of mother and child that withstands time and space. While she may long for something more out of a life she didn’t get to choose, she can still decide what to make of it.

Excerpted from 4 Janes, by Marian Yee. Little A, 2026. Reprinted with permission.

Chapter One

Marseilles, France, 1851

Jane Eyre is dead.

The plain gold band on my finger is the sign of her demise.

I am Jane Rivers now. Or, more accurately, Mrs. St. John Rivers.

Mrs. St. John Rivers. I try on the name like a pair of new calfskin gloves. The syllables glide along my tongue smoothly enough once I get over the little bump at the beginning. Then I study the small hands lying calmly in my lap. They are encased in soft, pale-yellow leather, and like my new name, they seem to belong to somebody else.

I have been a missionary’s wife for barely a week.

I wait at one of the fashionable coffeehouses on La Canebière, surrounded by wonders: gilding, mirrors, paintings, tapestries, and a large revolving clock in the center that gives the time on three continents. They bring together the charms of this port city as if in miniature. I look about, my senses heightened: The drink served here is not to my liking, but I savor its rich, smoky aroma.

For these moments at least, I sit alone. St. John is at the purser’s office, seeing to our cabins and passage. We arrived at this bustling French port last night, and were deposited, along with the English mail that had departed on the London train with us, in a damp heap along the quay. This followed a Channel crossing that was in itself a trial. I spent most of that time huffing short, shallow breaths and moaning miserably into my handkerchief while my stomach roiled. St. John held my hand dutifully while I battled nausea, but I could not entirely dismiss a sense that his patience was forced, that he hid his disapprobation at finding me such a poor traveler before we had even ventured beyond Europe.

No matter. Now all is near ready. We have said our goodbyes. I wait with our few belongings, only the baggage we will need on the crossing, hardly enough for a journey of nearly two months. Fortunately, our present needs are few, and the rest of our trunks will be sent along. In our haste to depart we left them to Diana and Mary—his sisters, my cousins—to assemble, to cord, to nail the cards that would direct them to our final destination. They will chase us from port to port until we are reunited—only six weeks from now!—in India. At that point, we will open them with a sense of wonder that such luxuries and extravagances exist; we will puzzle what to do with calfskin gloves and fur muffs in the blazing heat of a sun-drowned continent.

As I wait, I return to the book I laid aside and open it to the point where a folded sheet of paper divides the unread pages from the finished ones. The paper is nothing more, or less, than the very letter that started me off on this journey, having arrived for Mary two months ago from a friend in ⸺shire. As Mary shared its contents with Diana and me, one set of ears heard, with distant concern and casual curiosity, the misfortune of others that did not touch upon itself, while another set heard the end of the world.

It was news of a devastating fire at Thornfield: The entire estate had been burned to the ground, and no one there had survived the destruction. No one. God forgive me, there was only one who mattered in that moment, only one whose death meant my own. I could barely bring myself to whisper his name. Edward. I recall Mary’s voice droning on, then pausing; Diana’s sharp oh dear. Was it for the news or at my fainting dead away? I was told afterward that I had collapsed in a wordless heap.

I have no recollection of those hours, those days (five, they told me) immediately following, when I drifted in a haze of blankness. Feeling fled me; I was disembodied, perceiving only strange scraps. A slight stirring in the current of air let into the sickroom. Fragments of hushed speech floating in and out of range. Gradually, shadowy forms constellated into people coming in and going out, though one body remained the longest, hovering near my orbit like a constant moon. As the boundaries of my vision drew in, the blurred edges slowly sharpened into clear features: twin orbs of blue that floated, then settled upon a finely boned visage.

“Jane.” The eyes probed my face. “You know me.”

“Yes, St. John.”

He heaved a sigh. “You have been gone a long time.”

“I have been right here,” I said, bewildered. “In this bed. I have not moved.” Indeed, I felt stiff all over, for I had been practicing the pose of a corpse.

“Stay,” he gently implored.

“I am right here,” I repeated.

“Nay, you were drifting again, Jane. To that place you have been these past five days, five years, it seemed. Sorrow’s shores. Come back to the living, Jane.”

And then I remembered.

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