First published 2026
Guinevere Sharpe grew up in two worlds. Her mother Edith wrote the famous Ninth City fantasy series, casting Guinevere as the magical heroine who enchanted millions of readers. But the real Guinevere lived wild and neglected with her older brother in the woods around their Vermont farmhouse. Fame brought new dangers until a fire destroyed everything, killing Edith and leaving her series unfinished. Twenty years later, Guinevere trades on her mother's reputation while promoting a ghostwritten memoir. Her estranged brother breaks his silence to announce an art installation called Mother. Dark rumors follow his previous show. Guinevere's carefully constructed public image begins to fracture as buried memories resurface. She must finally face the questions that have haunted her since childhood. What really happened the night of the fire? What drove her mother's creative genius? The answers threaten to destroy everything Guinevere has built from the ashes of her family's legacy.
Genres: literary-fiction, mystery, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: dark, emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-secrets, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Vermont
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
416 pages · Hardcover · William Morrow
Content warnings: death, mental-illness