**A Blue Beard retelling** Based on Charles Perrault's fairytale, this YA Historical Fantasy short story set in Victorian England mixes romance, magic and mystery. After agreeing to an arranged marriage to escape her greedy relatives, 18-year-old heiress Amelia moves into her husband's manor determined to start a new life. But the gothic mansion's forbidding surroundings, the servants' strange demeanour and her husband's mysterious past soon awaken her suspicions. If Amelia truly wants to become the lady of the house, she'll have to discover what secrets lie beyond closed doors and unravel the mystery of the old house's forbidden room. But sometimes secrets are kept for a good reason... HIGHEST RANKING IN HISTORICAL FICTION # 44 Copyright © 2017. All works posted here are the property of EM Castellan. Please do not use without permission. Any duplication or reproduction of all or part of the work without explicit permission by the author is illegal. Cover artist: @seventhstar

Trapped in the woodlands, Ivy's only hope of going home is to escape the faerie who enchants her into loving him, blinding her to what he is--monstrous. *** A dark fortress of trees twisted and crippled by time, the Clearwater, Connecticut, woods is no place for two teenage girls. The legends claim it's haunted. Fed up with being kept inside after dark, fearing the monster will take them, sixteen-year-old Ivy Farewell and her best friend Margaret set out to prove everyone wrong--that the ghost of Clearwater isn't a ghost. And the voice that has been calling to Ivy after dark is simply a trick of the wind. But the woods are deeper than Ivy imagined, each turn bringing them farther from home. When they end up lost their only hope is in each other. All seems undone when Ivy falls ill with a fever, until a stranger persuades them back to his cabin. Under his spell, Ivy falls into a deep and complicated love, a love so treacherous it blinds her to what he truly is--a monster. Copyright © 2023 T.A. Joseph All rights reserved cover by @xenomorphius