Lana Popović

A historical YA horror novel based on the infamous real-life inspiration for Countess Dracula In 16th century Hungary, Anna Darvulia has just begun working as a scullery maid for the young and glamorous Countess Elizabeth Báthory. When Elizabeth takes a liking to Anna, she’s vaulted to the dream role of chambermaid, a far cry from the filthy servants’ quarters below. She receives wages generous enough to provide for her family, and the Countess begins to groom Anna as her friend and confidante. It’s not long before Anna falls completely under the Countess’s spell—and the Countess takes full advantage. Isolated from her former friends, family, and fiancé, Anna realizes she’s not a friend but a prisoner of the increasingly cruel Elizabeth. Then come the murders, and Anna knows it’s only a matter of time before the Blood Countess turns on her, too.

All the women in Iris and Malina’s family have the unique magical ability or “gleam” to manipulate beauty. Iris sees flowers as fractals and turns her kaleidoscope visions into glasswork, while Malina interprets moods as music. But their mother has strict rules to keep their gifts a secret, even in their secluded sea-side town. Iris and Malina are not allowed to share their magic with anyone, and above all, they are forbidden from falling in love. But when their mother is mysteriously attacked, the sisters will have to unearth the truth behind the quiet lives their mother has built for them. They will discover a wicked curse that haunts their family line—but will they find that the very magic that bonds them together is destined to tear them apart forever?

In the bewitching conclusion to Lana Popovic’s sumptuous and romantic teen fantasy duology, Malina must use her gleam to rescue her twin sister from a magical power more dangerous than Death. Twin sisters Iris and Malina thought they knew how to reverse the ancient curse that haunts their line, the spell that destines them to use their gleams—unique forms of beauty-manipulating magic—to entice and enchant none other than Death himself. But both sisters thought wrong. Instead of ending the wicked bargain with the power of her infinite bloom, Iris is taken to an exquisite, uncanny realm in between this world and the next—a world Death created for her alone. Only, unlike all of Death’s companions before, Iris’s body goes on the one-way journey along with her soul, arriving in a kingdom never meant to sustain a living girl. Left behind with Niko, her girlfriend, and Luka, the boy her sister loves, Lina searches for a way to save Iris. But as Lina unearths the dark secrets that bind her family to parallel fates of loss and immortality and Iris tries to outwit Death on his own terrain, a power resurfaces that even Mara, the original witch mother, fears. Now both sisters must learn to fully embrace their gleams—or else they’ll truly lose each other forever. Luscious and breathtaking, Fierce Like a Firestorm is the second book in Lana Popovic’s dazzling duology about freedom, beauty, sacrifice, and the infinite power of love.

Book 2 in the Lady Slayers series, about French murderess and fortune teller Catherine Monvoisin In 17th-century Paris, 19-year-old Catherine Monvoisin is a well-heeled jeweler’s wife with a peculiar taste for the arcane. She lives a comfortable life, far removed from a childhood of abject destitution—until her kind spendthrift of a husband lands them both in debt. Hell-bent on avoiding a return to poverty, Catherine must rely on her prophetic visions and the grimoire gifted to her by a talented diviner to reinvent herself as a sorceress. With the help of the grifter Marie Bosse, Catherine divines fortunes in the IIle de la Citee—home to sorcerers and scoundrels. There she encounters the Marquise de Montespan, a stunning noblewoman. When the Marquise becomes Louis XIV’s royal mistress with Catherine’s help, her ascension catapults Catherine to notoriety. Catherine takes easily to her glittering new life as the Sorceress La Voisin, pitting the depraved noblesse against one other to her advantage. The stakes soar ever higher when her path crosses with that of a young magician. A charged rivalry between sorceress and magician leads to Black Masses, tangled deceptions, and grisly murder—and sets Catherine on a collision course that threatens her own life.