Literary Mystique

"But I also can't tell him I've spent my entire life looking at myself through fog, pretending to be alive and hoping that one day I'd actually start to feel like I was, and now I'm terrified there's no hope left." Synopsis : Infatuation. Reincarnation. Damnation. Gem Echols is a nonbinary Seminole teen living in the tiny town of Gracie, Georgia. Known for being their peers’ queer awakening, Gem leans hard on charm to disguise the anxious mess they are beneath. The only person privy to their authentic self is another trans kid, Enzo, who’s a thousand long, painful miles away in Brooklyn. But even Enzo doesn’t know about Gem’s dreams, haunting visions of magic and violence that have always felt too real. So how does Willa Mae Hardy? The strange new girl in town acts like she and Gem are old companions, and seems to know things about them they’ve never told anyone else. When Gem is attacked by a stranger claiming to be the Goddess of Death, Willa Mae saves t

"Everywhere I looked I saw people hurting, disappointed, weighed down with longings they couldn’t name.." Synopsis :  A freak car crash in 1960s rural North Carolina puts in motion moments of grace that bring redemption to two generations of women and the lives they touch. For forty years Aurilla Cutter has tended a clutch of secrets that have turned her mean. A fatal accident becomes the catalyst for the release of the passions, needs, and hurts in everyone affected by her hidden past. Darlene, a seventeen-year-old widow, struggles to reconnect with her dead husband while proving herself still alive. Soon loss and death work their magic, drawing Darlene into an unlikely affair that threatens to upend Aurilla’s family, and sets loose Aurilla’s own memories of longing and infidelity. As Aurilla’s forbidden and heartbreaking story of love, death, and repeated loss alternates with Darlene’s, the divide of generations and time narrows and collapses, building to the unlikely col