The Witches Who Went to War: The Real History Behind Her Darkest Hour by Suzy Henderson

The Witches Who Went to War: The Real History Behind Her Darkest Hour

When I started writing Her Darkest Hour, I wasn’t just inspired by the idea of witches in wartime—I was captivated by the real, historical belief that magic could be used to defend Britain.

In researching the book, I discovered a lineage of magical resistance stretching back centuries. In 1588, when the Spanish Armada threatened England, tales emerged of magical circles cast to summon storms. During the Napoleonic Wars, rural communities quietly turned to cunning folk—herbalists, charmers, and wise women—to protect them from invasion.

But perhaps most fascinating of all is the rumour that during WWII, a group of witches gathered in the New Forest to perform a ritual known as the Cone of Power. Their aim? To stop Hitler from setting foot on British soil. It sounds like folklore—but it’s part of Britain’s strange, often forgotten magical undercurrent. The war wasn’t just fought on beaches and battlefields. It was fought, too, in glades and gardens, by those who believed the spiritual realm had a part to play.

That hidden history became the beating heart of Her Darkest Hour. Eliza Maclean, a young Scottish witch, is drawn from her quiet life on the Isle of Mull into a war she never expected to fight. Recruited by MI5, she finds herself hunting a German spy in Cambridge—but with magic, not guns.

I wanted to honour both the women who stepped into wartime roles and the lesser-known stories of those who used ancient knowledge to protect what they loved. Eliza’s magic is not flashy or cinematic—it’s rooted in emotion, empathy, and intuition. And that, perhaps, is what made it so powerful.

In the end, this book is a tribute to the quiet guardians of our past—those who lit candles, traced symbols, whispered prayers to old gods, and believed, fiercely, in their country’s protection.

What if those rituals worked?

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy discovering Eliza’s journey in Her Darkest Hour.

Suzy Henderson
Author of Her Darkest Hour
#HerDarkestHour #HistoricalFantasy #WartimeWitches

Her Darkest Hour
by Suzy Henderson
Publication date: May 8th 2025
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Historical
In the shadow of war, a young woman must choose: deny her magic or wield it to stop a traitor before Britain falls.

England, 1939. A young witch. A nation at war. A spy hiding in plain sight.

As war looms over Britain, Eliza MacLean wants nothing more than an ordinary life. Raised on the Isle of Mull, she’s spent years denying her gifts—just as her mother insisted. But her grandmother taught her differently, whispering ancient knowledge of herbs, charms, and spells.

When her grandmother dies, Eliza seeks refuge in Cambridge with her cousin and the women of the WVS. But beneath its spires and blacked-out streets, Cambridge hides more than just scholars and soldiers. A secret network of witches is working to protect Britain from an enemy who knows magic is real—and seeks to weaponise it.

Drawn into the fight, Eliza is thrust into a world of espionage, deception, and occult warfare. Her rare abilities catch the attention of MI5 agent Alex Fletcher, who needs her help to unmask a deadly spy before it’s too late.

As she learns to harness her power, Eliza finds herself torn between duty and love, risking everything for Jim, a fighter pilot whose fate seems written in the stars. But war is ruthless, and magic has a price.

With the spy closing in and the war reaching new heights of peril, Eliza’s only hope of saving those she loves is to embrace the very magic she’s spent a lifetime hiding—no matter the cost.

But some powers were never meant to be used.

Perfect for fans of A Discovery of Witches and The Rose Code, Her Darkest Hour blends historical fiction with supernatural intrigue in a gripping tale of war, witchcraft, and sacrifice.

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About the Author:
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Suzy Henderson is the author of The Beauty Shop, Madame Fiocca, and SPITFIRE, novels which are set during the turbulent times of World War Two. She also writes romance and recently released a novella, Christmas in the Highlands, a best seller on Amazon UK.

Her debut novel, The Beauty Shop, was awarded the B.R.A.G. Medallion. It is based on the true story of pioneering plastic surgeon, Sir Archibald McIndoe, and the Guinea Pig Club – an exclusive club for RAF pilots and airmen who required plastic surgery as a result of their war injuries and were under the care of this enigmatic New Zealander.

Madame Fiocca is also based on a true story. This gripping adventure follows the tempestuous life of SOE heroine, Nancy Wake before and during the Second World War.

Suzy lives with her family on the edge of the Lake District, where she can be found rambling around lakes, country lanes or roaming the fells. Armed with a pen, a love of reading and a growing obsession with military and aviation history, she is often lost in the 1940s, writing historical fiction.

To receive all Suzy's latest book news, do join her reading group here & claim a free story: https://www.suzyhenderson.com

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Literary Fiction Author Mathias B. Freese: My namesake - Cantor Matyas Balogh

 Cantor Matyas Balogh

I don’t have much to work with. There is a torn photograph and a business card, both over a hundred years old. The card has faded and is foxed much like an old book or print. In the photograph my great grandfather is wearing his cantorial hat and has strong eyes, quite possibly hazel. He was a hazan, Hebrew for cantor. The card is written in Hungarian such as Boldog Ujevet Kivan (in boldface), fokantor beneath his name, Hebrew letters at the bottom left and what I believe is the town of Monor, which is in Hungary, at bottom right. (Anyone who can translate these words?)

I was named after him, Mathias Balogh Freese, which has been a bane for much of my life. Often mispronounced, I grew up detesting it. Bob or Dick would have been better. My mother caved to my grandma Flora who always extolled her father and most likely pressured her to name me after him. The name looks good in print but I wasn’t in print for all my childhood and young adulthood. Who calls a kid “Mathias”? Even today if a nurse calls me in to see the doctor she often mispronounces the name, often in a Spanish lilt, or struggles through the three phonemes. So it is MAYtheeuss, MUHthias, or Monotonous. (Try to mispronounce Steve.)

In Hebrew school I became Mordecai, not too bad. In Spanish class I was called Mateo. Mathias and Mathew are closely related linguistically, for they mean “gift of god” in Hebrew. That I can handle. For years I was called Matty, much a girl’s name and one classmate was called Mathew which made me jealous. Odd to think, that Matty kept me immature in my own self. When I was teaching in my mid twenties an older teacher and friend told me he couldn’t call me Matty and told me to go by Matt, which I did. I liked that. I renamed myself, how unusual, as I look back.

So Shakespeare’s line about what’s in a name is poetically clever, but not psychologically true, not for me. We are defined by our names. Naming is a critical issue, for it is also labeling. So in 2024 Sidney, Sylvester and Beatrice don’t make it, they are punitive to the children who are dubbed in such a tone deaf manner. Kirk Douglas is much more mellifluous than Isadore Demsky Danielovich, and Tony Curtis wears better than Bernie Schwartz. We named our daughter Brett after a character in The Sun Also Rises, only to discover years later that the Navy wanted to recruit her as a seaman.

Several years ago I wrote, “Cantor Matyas Balogh,” a love story from my collection of stories about the Holocaust, in “I Truly Lament,” publication in 2015. I cannot explain why this love story of a cantor with the backdrop of the Holocaust for context arose in my mind. I am curious about my great grandfather. I know that he supposedly spoke many languages, as grandma bragged, some fourteen it was said (really? I don’t think so, but maybe). I heard as a child that he flirted or “fooled” around with some of the women in the congregation. Why not? Hungarian woman are scrumptious — think Ilona Massey. And the Hungarians are renown for being superior mathematicians and physicists.

He died before the Nazis and was not part of the Holocaust, but I wonder if his tombstone was turned over by the Hun. I believe he is interred in Hungary which does not explain why Grandma Flora came over and he remained. All not known to me. I have few details about him that could not fill a thimble, yet he remains in my mind. I would like to go to Monor, only if I research his ancestry and have more to go on before I depart. I wonder how many, many decades have passed without a stone being placed on his coldly unfriended marker. I would do that and in some peculiar way I would make peace with myself. And I would be moved and I would weep a little, for I am of his line. It does give me satisfaction that I had an ancestor of some brilliance.

I stop here to tell the unvarnished truth. I pay homage to him because it confirms that I ,too, am intelligent and aware; that I had a relative who flowed intellectually; that my father was a dunce and I have struggled all my life, in a way, to become Matyas Balogh; his intelligence, his gifts sustain me so metaphorically it hurts. As a retired shrink, so much is latent and manifest here, like a juicy pomegranate, so much to tease out and to reconcile with and to draw much sustenance from.

I am, I am so very much– Mathias Balogh Freese

When Grandma assimilated here, she went into vaudeville and was known as Flo Balogh (pronouncing it Barlow). I once asked a Hungarian woman if she could tell me something about the name. Chuckling, she said it was very common in Hungary and was the equivalent of Joe Smith. So much for exceptionalism.
Americanized, assimilated, Flo always urged me to become a rabbi! And she would give me lunch to encourage that. Often it was a Swiss cheese and ham sandwich with a strawberry milk drink shot with seltzer, which I loved. Ham, milk and cheese, leads to becoming a rabbi — or a goy. Meschuge! And at Christmas time I once discovered a small Christmas tree on top of the television set, probably a residue when she was in vaudeville and everybody was everybody else. I was offended at that, for my conditioning as a Jew had been set in place and the old battleax was a violator. Feed her bulbous ass to Moloch. I wonder if she was a handful for my great grandfather, for as a young woman she was a real beauty. I have a few pictures of her which are portraits from the hand of Mucha, Art Nouveau all the way.
Grandma had the gauche panache of Zsa Zsa Gabor and one hell of a father.

In the Throes
by Mathias B. Freese
March 28, 2024
Genre: Metaphysical & Visionary Fiction, Literary Fiction
In the Throes explores the awakening of intelligence and the coming into awareness of an evolutionary mishap on a forbidding apocalyptic planet.

The story follows eponymic Gruff, the first linguistic/metaphysical awakener of his species, as he navigates identity, mentation, and ontology in relation to the Gruff's natural prey: humankind.

Combining the writings of Freud and the spiritual truths of Krishnamurti, author Mathias B. Freese depicts the Gruff as an evolutionary dark creature—disfigured, maimed, instinct-driven, and grotesque—until he attains self-awareness and transforms into a self of artistic expression and wisdom.

As the title suggests, the reader identifies with self-struggle as it surges toward awakening and is moved by the apotheosis that closes the book. The nuanced theme: each one of us is an artist if only we take our selves in hand and construct a life of artistic expression. The closing chapters sing to us of Isak Dinesen's observation that an artist is never poor.

A metaphor of the evolutionary self, In the Throes is a time-processed journey into awareness—our destiny as a species.

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About the Author:
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MATHIAS B. FREESE is a writer, teacher, and psychotherapist who has authored nine books. After his first novel, The i Tetralogy on the Holocaust, his second work, I Truly Lament: Working Through the Holocaust, won the Beverly Hills Book Award, Reader's Favorite Book Award, and was a finalist in the Indie Excellence Book Awards, the Paris Book Festival, and the Amsterdam Book Festival. In 2016, Tesserae: A Memoir of Two Summers, his first memoir, received seven awards. The following year his second memoir appeared, And Then I Am Gone. In 2019, Nina's Memento Mori, a highly regarded memoir, was published. In 2022, Freese published Again. Again and Again: Awakening into Awareness - Essays and Stories.

Book Review: Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk

Thirst
by Marina Yuszczuk
March 5, 2024
Publisher: Dutton
ASIN: B0C773SH3T
ISBN: 9780593472064
It is the twilight of Europe’s bloody bacchanals, of murder and feasting without end. In the nineteenth century, a vampire arrives from Europe to the coast of Buenos Aires and, for the second time in her life, watches as villages transform into a cosmopolitan city, one that will soon be ravaged by yellow fever. She must adapt, intermingle with humans, and be discreet.

In present-day Buenos Aires, a woman finds herself at an impasse as she grapples with her mother's terminal illness and her own relationship with motherhood. When she first encounters the vampire in a cemetery, something ignites within the two women—and they cross a threshold from which there’s no turning back.

With echoes of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and written in the vein of feminist Gothic writers like Shirley Jackson, Daphne du Maurier, and Carmen Maria Machado, Thirst plays with the boundaries of genre while exploring the limits of female agency, the consuming power of desire, and the fragile vitality of even the most immortal of creatures.

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Thirst is about a female vampire told in first person. How she was sold by her mother to a vampire nobleman, who fed off her and eventually he turned her when she became a young woman, her and other women who she began thinking of as her sisters. When the Master vamp is killed many years later, she and her sisters escape, living wild in the forests, feeding off humans. As the years progress and they learn to cloth themselves and seduce victims for their food, her sisters are destroyed and eventually the vampire gets aboard a ship that heads to the new world, arriving in Buenos Aires.

The novel has touches reminding me of classic horror like Dracula and Frankenstein, with whispers of writing not unlike Shirley Jackson, Daphne du Maurier, and other gothic writers.

A blood-soaked novel of unending blood thirst, death, immortality, and desire that pulls you in with its haunting prose, bringing vampires that are not like those in Twilight, but back to the dark, scary ones.

I gave Thirst 4 sheep.




Reviewed by Pamela K. Kinney

About the Author:
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Marina Yuszczuk was born in Argentina in 1978. She is a writer and founding editor of Rosa Iceberg, a press focused on publishing writing by women. She is the author of multiple books of poetry, short-story collections, and novels. She has a PhD in literature from Universidad Nacional de la Plata and is a film critic for one of Argentina’s top newspapers. Thirst is her first book to be published in the United States.

Book Review: Lone Women By Victor LaSalle

Lone Women
By Victor LaSalle
March 21, 2023
Publisher: One World
ASIN: B0B4R7NMQ7 

ISBN: 9780525512080
Blue skies, empty land—and enough room to hide away a horrifying secret. Or is there? Discover a haunting new vision of the American West from the award-winning author of The Changeling.

Adelaide Henry carries an enormous steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It’s locked at all times. Because when the trunk is opened, people around her start to disappear...

The year is 1915, and Adelaide is in trouble. Her secret sin killed her parents, and forced her to flee her hometown of Redondo, California, in a hellfire rush, ready to make her way to Montana as a homesteader. Dragging the trunk with her at every stop, she will be one of the "lone women" taking advantage of the government's offer of free land for those who can cultivate it—except that Adelaide isn't alone. And the secret she's tried so desperately to lock away might be the only thing keeping her alive.

Told in Victor LaValle's signature style, blending historical fiction, shimmering prose, and inventive horror, Lone Women is the gripping story of a woman desperate to bury her past—and a portrait of early twentieth-century America like you've never seen.

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Adelaide Henry is a Black woman who escapes after her parents’ murders, taking an enormous steamer trunk with her to Washington. She ends up in Montana after taking advantage of some free land with a cabin, sight unseen. Funny thing, she is not alone and has a big secret and the reason why she fled after her parents were killed.

This historical horror tells about wide-open space when the West was still being settled where one could hide a horrifying secret. A secret that maybe too monstrous. If you love historical horror, this book hits all the dark spots. And yet, lovers of American history fiction will love it too.

I gave Lone Women 4 1/2 sheep

Reviewed by Pamela K. Kinney

About the Author:

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Victor LaValle is the author of a short-story collection, Slapboxing with Jesus, four novels, The Ecstatic, Big Machine, The Devil in Silver & The Changeling, and two novellas, Lucretia and the Kroons and The Ballad of Black Tom.

His most recent novel, THE CHANGELING, is an old school fairy tale. It's made to keep you up at night. It's meant to make you scared.

Book Review: The Man Who Came and Went by Joe Stillman

The Man Who Came and Went
by Joe Stillman
March1, 2022
Genre: Magical Realism / Mature YA / Literary Fiction
Publisher: City Point Press
ISBN: 9781947951389
Number of pages: 240
Word Count: 64,000
Cover Artist: Barbara Aronica-Buck and Susan Stillman
A grill cook who mind-reads orders.

A diner that changes lives.

Tips appreciated.

Fifteen year old Belutha Mariah, our storyteller, is the oldest of three kids from three different fathers. Her life’s goal is to keep her dysfunctional mom, Maybell, from procreating yet again and then to leave the coffin-sized town of Hadley, Arizona the second she graduates high school.

Along comes the new grill cook at Maybell’s Diner, Bill Bill, a mysterious drifter with the ability to mind-read orders. As word spreads, the curious and desperate pour into this small desert town to eat at Maybell's. Some believe Bill knows the secrets of the universe. Belutha figures he’s probably nuts.

But his cooking starts to transform the lives of locals and visitors, and Belutha finds her angry heart opening as Bill begins to show her the porous boundary between this life and what comes after.

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I was excited to read this book. The blurb made me think of Dean Koontz’s storyline of “Odd Thomas” which is one of my favorites so I had to give this a try. Just as enticing but not the same!

Early on I fe”lt” the storyline would draw me in and it did…except that every word that had a “fi”, “fl”, and “ft” had those letters missing. Making me have to figure out the word it was supposed to be. Imagine reading “a ter”, “xing” and “midri “ (as just a few examples) and trying to keep the flow “ow” of the story.

Now, this was probably an unedited copy and the typewriter just had problems with the keys (ha) but if not…it’s a slang I have never before seen.

I eventually got the hang of it and became strongly invested in the characters. Maybell, her daughter Belutha and an interesting stranger named Bill (turned “short order cook” make quite the story. Set in a desolate desert town, one strange man brings a lot of insight, promise and joy to many. This story is great for our current time and should be a must-read. Could help us see ourselves in a different light.

I know this review started off with some negativity but I am sure the lettering has been corrected so don’t miss out on this one!

Getting 4.5 sheep

JeanieG

Excerpt
That day, the day Bill arrived, my mom was serving up eggs and complaints.

“Dammit, that daughter ‘a mine,” she yelled to Dolene, across the diner. “She’s like walking birth control. Does she think I’m trying to have babies? ‘Scuse me, Darlin’” Maybell gave Clover’s bubble walker a little kick, sending it between tables 4 and 6 so she could get by and dump a load of dishes behind the counter.

Dolene was homegrown, like the tumbleweed, with eyes like a golden retriever that never quite looked at you directly. She was smart enough to add up a check, but you could tell she was never getting out of Hadley. “I take it you didn’t get laid last night.”

Maybell pointed to her sour puss. “Does this say ‘laid’ to you?”

There was a ‘harrumph’ from booth 5 by the window. That was Rose. Rose was an old woman by the time she was 30. Now she was in her late 60s, a widow since before I was born—in other words, forever. She liked to spend her afternoons at Maybell’s Diner, reading her book and keeping an eye on the goings on around her, as if she was the town’s homeroom teacher.

“Look at Saint Rose,” Maybell said, stuffing dirty plates into the plastic tub under the counter. “Thinks she smells better than Mentos. I ain’t running a library here, Rose. Next time bring Reader’s Digest!”

There was another sound from Rose, something between a ‘well’ and a ‘pfffft.’ She never took her eyes off her book.

The door opened with a DING from the bell that hung on it. No one noticed Bill entering. He was about average in height, but his skinny frame made him look taller. You could tell from his face that he was in his mid-20s, but those were hard years he had lived, and his body looked frail and geriatric. His clothes were old and clung to him like an extra layer of skin, with a smell that would never wash out.

The angles of his face were sharp and careworn. But his eyes, those were different. His face was hard and weathered, but his eyes were soft. They seemed brand new.

No one in the diner even looked. If they did they would have seen those eyes taking in every little detail: the people talking, forks carrying food, the string lights behind the counter, Dolene ringing up a check. But what drew Bill more than anything else was the grill. Harley, the grill cook, must have had four meals going at once, each with its own set of sounds and smells. Most of those meals involved eggs. His spatula made a metal-on-metal scrape as he turned them. Bill was riveted. He went to sit at the counter to watch.

Down the counter, a porkish-looking man named Earle—probably one of three men in town who had never slept with my mom—raised his empty cup. “Can I get a refill, Maybell?”

Maybell stopped and faced him. “Seriously, Earle? Is it so goddam much trouble for you to get up off your ass and get it yourself? Can’t you see I’m working here?”

“Well…” he stammered. “I just—was I—I was—”

Maybell pointed to the coffee pot. “How far away is that? Two feet?”

“Sure, I guess…”

“Am I your personal slave, Earle? Is that why God put me on earth?”

“No, I don’t think you’re—”

Maybell grabbed the pot and sloshed coffee in his Earle’s cup. “There. You happy now?”

He nodded meekly.

While she had the pot in her hand, Maybell filled the cup sitting in front of Bill. “I’ll be by to take your order in a minute, hon.”

Maybell walked on. Bill just sat there and stared at the coffee. For him, there was no diner anymore, no Maybell, no clanking dishes or dumb conversation. He leaned closer to that cup like it was the only thing in the world. And there he was, smelling coffee for the first time. And it smelled like life. Like a whole world. Like this is how a planet smells if you’re up in space and could take a deep breath. Bill was motionless for who knows how long. And then, when he was good and ready, he took his first sip.

Those eyes, the ones that didn’t belong on his head, they closed as if he was praying. No, more like he was hearing a prayer. The coffee was praying to be heard, and Bill heard it.

About the Author:
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Joe Stillman co-wrote “Shrek” for Dreamworks which earned him an Academy Award® nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay and the Annie and BAFTA Awards. Other produced features are “Beavis & Butthead Do America”, “Shrek 2”, “Gulliver’s Travels”, “Planet 51” and “Joseph King Of Dreams”.

In television, he was co-producer and writer on “King of the Hill,” for which he received two Emmy Award® nominations. He was a writer and story editor for Nickelodeon’s “The Adventures of Pete and Pete” and a writer on MTV’s “Beavis and Butthead”. More recently he worked on Nickelodeon’s “Sanjay And Craig” and “Kirby Buckets” for Disney. Other TV credits include “Albert” for Nickelodeon, “The War Next Door” for the USA Network, “Clueless”, “Doug” and “Danger And Eggs” for Amazon.

Joe is currently working on “Curious George” and “Half-Baked 2” for streaming on Peacock.

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From the writer of "Shrek" comes "The Man Who Came and Went," a magically realistic novel about a grill cook who can mind read orders, and a small town diner that changes lives. #Shrek #Shrek2 #beavisandbutthead #beavisandbuttheaddoamerica #kingofthehill #theadventuresofpeteandpete

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Cover Reveal: Everyday Magic by Charlie Laidlaw

Everyday Magic
by Charlie Laidlaw
Expected Publication Date: May 26th, 2021
Genre: Literary fiction/ Contemporary Fiction/ Humour
Carole Gunn leads an unfulfilled life and knows it. She’s married to someone who may, or may not, be in New York on business and, to make things worse, the family’s deaf cat has been run over by an electric car.

But something has been changing in Carole’s mind. She’s decided to revisit places that hold special significance for her. She wants to better understand herself, and whether the person she is now is simply an older version of the person she once was.

Instead, she’s taken on an unlikely journey to confront her past, present and future.

Everyday Magic is an uplifting book filled with humour and poignancy, and reminds us that, while our pasts make us who we are, we can always change the course of our futures.

Coming Soon!

Other books by Charlie Laidlaw

About the Author:

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Charlie Laidlaw lives in East Lothian, one of the main settings for Everyday Magic. He has four other published novels: Being Alert!, The Space Between Time, The Things We Learn When We’re Dead and Love Potions and Other Calamities. Previously a journalist and defence intelligence analyst, Charlie now teaches Creative Writing in addition to his writing career.

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Author Guest Post: Emily Croy Barker + Giveaway

We have debut author Emily Croy Barker talking about her novel The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic and how she used real world issues to create an alternate feudal world, where women are second class citizens and magic is real.

It takes my character Nora some time to realize that she has left her own world behind and entered another one altogether. That’s partly because she spends several chapters in a happy, distracted fog of enchantment, her perceptions dulled. Nor is Nora—at least as the book starts out—the kind of person who would ever entertain the notion that other worlds exist.

When the enchantment is finally dissipated and Nora is herself again, she finds herself in a place that’s very different from anything she’s used to. It’s a rural, agricultural society organized on feudal lines, with a hereditary aristocracy dominating a much larger group of mostly landless peasants. The technology in use is primitive. People travel via horse or on foot. Houses are lit by candles or oil lamps and heated with wood fires. Nora misses indoor plumbing.

Another shock for her is the subordinate status of women, who are the legal property of their husbands or male relatives. If a husband kills an unfaithful spouse, it’s justifiable homicide—although, to be fair, the more enlightened stratum of this world’s society now considers murdering an adulterous wife to be in rather poor taste. Almost all women are illiterate. Nora discovers that her habit of saying hello to the men she encounters and looking them in the eye draws comment. Although Nora finds a niche for herself in Lord Aruendiel’s household, none of her professional skills acquired as a graduate student in English literature have any relevance now, and she can’t reasonably expect anything better than a life of cooking, cleaning, and physical labor.

And then there is the magic. That’s the biggest change from the world Nora knows, and it takes her a long time to accept the existence of magic, even though Aruendiel, who is a magician, gives her more than one compelling demonstration. Her brain keeps thinking: There must be another explanation. Like, maybe I’m crazy. As it happens, Aruendiel has also visited Nora’s world—our world. “It was intriguing to see how a world can be organized without magic,” he tells Nora. “There was magic there, of course, but the inhabitants might as well have been blind or deaf, they were so unaware of it.” Once Nora does decide that magic exists, her next thought is: How can I do magic, too? The second half of my novel tells the story of how she fulfills that ambition.

Showing readers Aruendiel’s world through Nora’s eyes emphasizes its strangeness and exoticism. But for me as a writer, the two worlds are not so different. After all, there are plenty of places in our world where poverty keeps people living in pre-modern squalor, where local warlords rule, and/or where women are treated as second-class citizens. I drew on my knowledge of our world to create a credible alternate universe, trying to include as many specific details as possible, making some educated guesses.

In a world with magic, for instance, would there be any incentive to develop sophisticated engineering or technological solutions to various problems in daily life? Probably not. That lack in turn would inhibit any shift towards an industrial revolution or the growth of a mass market. And having magic in the hands of a relatively small number of magicians or wizards who work mostly for kings and aristocrats would likely reinforce that society’s existing hierarchy (while perhaps also fueling rivalries among those lords and monarchs). If you have to be able to read to practice magic—which seems to be the case in Aruendiel’s world—and most women can’t read, that’s another barrier to the female empowerment. Sadly, magic does not always make for a more just, prosperous, or peaceful society.

As Aruendiel himself would be the first to admit, learning magic is one thing. Using it properly is another art entirely.

Nora Fischer’s dissertation is stalled and her boyfriend is about to marry another woman. During a miserable weekend at a friend’s wedding, Nora wanders off and walks through a portal into a different world where she’s transformed from a drab grad student into a stunning beauty. Before long, she has a set of glamorous new friends and her romance with gorgeous, masterful Raclin is heating up. It’s almost too good to be true.

Then the elegant veneer shatters. Nora’s new fantasy world turns darker, a fairy tale gone incredibly wrong. Making it here will take skills Nora never learned in graduate school. Her only real ally—and a reluctant one at that—is the magician Aruendiel, a grim, reclusive figure with a biting tongue and a shrouded past. And it will take her becoming Aruendiel’s student—and learning magic herself—to survive. When a passage home finally opens, Nora must weigh her "real life" against the dangerous power of love and magic.

About the author:
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A graduate of Harvard University, Emily Croy Barker has been a magazine journalist for more than 20 years. She is currently executive editor at The American Lawyer magazine. This is her first novel.