Showing results by author "Jess Elliott" in All Categories

When artist Mara Ellison inherits a flood-bitten Victorian on the edge of a Southern river, she finds the house already knows her name—and expects her to learn its rules. With a townsman eyeing her land, a ledger that writes back, and a quietly relentless carpenter who refuses to turn bravery into theater, Mara must choose: perform a haunting, or practice a home. Blackbird House is a modern gothic about thresholds and plain miracles: a door that cools under a thankful hand, a river that insists on its sentence, and the hard, ordinary courage of staying.

In a forgotten valley where the river never stops whispering, the house called Thornevale still breathes. Once, it belonged to June West — a servant who fell in love with the house's cursed master, Thorne, and with the river that bound them both. When betrayal and longing tore the living from the dead, the house learned to keep what it loved. Now, years later, the floodwaters rise again, carrying echoes of a love that refused to die. When the villagers begin hearing bells tolling beneath the water, they speak of the Keeper, a spirit who remembers too much. But June is no ghost.

In the aftermath of the Sovereign’s fall, Seryth wears the Hollow’s crown—a living relic of root and light that ties her to the land’s oldest power. But the ember that nearly consumed the realm still breathes deep beneath the roots, and its hunger has only grown. When the pale tree at the basin begins to burn from within, Seryth is drawn into a final confrontation with a force that cannot be killed, only contained. To seal the ember, she must stand against the Heartflame—an ancient, burning will given form—and risk binding it through herself.

Aria Wynn knows better than to trust the fae. But when her family’s life hangs by a thread, she accepts a prince’s impossible offer: serve one year in the twilight court of Evershade in exchange for their safety. Bound by ancient magic and a crown that feeds on truth, Prince Riven needs a mortal witness to keep his court from devouring itself—and Aria’s defiance might be the only thing keeping him human.

When nineteen-year-old Elara returns to her grandmother’s ridge house in the Appalachian hollow, she finds more than heirlooms waiting. A sycamore tree as pale as bone stands watch, a cracked pocket watch stops at 10:17 each day, and a ledger filled with rules whispers what it costs to live here: Kin before names. Bread before bargains. Never pay in leaving. The hollow keeps storms, secrets, and sometimes people. If you feed it heels of bread and speak plain, it will mind its side of the fence.

When Mara, a dispossessed princess with a talent for breaking sacred machinery, shatters the chain that kept Embergate obedient, she doesn’t just topple a tyrant—she wakes the ancient Heart that beats beneath the hills. As rival priests, ledgers, and would-be saviors rush to claim the city’s future, Mara and Talon—a scarred swordsman who believes in promises more than prophecies—forge a perilous alliance to teach power a new shape. Their rebellion isn’t waged with thrones and banners but with voices, oaths, and the dangerous magic of ordinary people telling the truth out loud.

In a world held together by a fragile lattice of ancient magic, darkness stirs beneath the surface—an unstoppable tide led by the Hollow King, a merciless force bent on unraveling all that binds the realm. Seryth, the last Binder, wields a glowing shard that holds the key to preserving the lattice and the world itself. Torn between the weight of her destiny and the sacrifices it demands, she must rally fractured allies, bind ancient powers, and stand against a rising storm of shadow and fire.

The forest crowned her. The thorns obey her. But power never comes without sacrifice. Seryth has survived the Hollow—but not unscathed. No longer the voiceless girl feared and forgotten, she now wears the thorns of a sovereign bound to a land that hungers for blood and memory. Magic seeps through her veins like sap, ancient and wild, reshaping not just her fate but the balance of power across a crumbling kingdom. But claiming a crown is not the same as keeping it. Old enemies stir beneath sacred roots. The Order that once hunted her now seeks to control her.

The hive is not dead. Though Celia and Ambrose sever its first heart, the silence spreads deeper, twisting roots into the soil of the village itself. As suspicion turns the townsfolk into enemies, the pair must descend into tunnels no one dared enter, where skulls whisper and memories bleed. To destroy the hive, Celia must sacrifice more than her life—she must sever her dearest memories. But in Graysmire, love and grief are bound, and what is cut away can never be reclaimed.

When Celia Vale inherits the crumbling estate of Graysmire, she expects loneliness and ruin. What she finds instead is a house that breathes in silence, watches through its walls, and whispers with the voices of the dead. Drawn into the manor’s decayed beauty and haunted halls, Celia uncovers the truth of its hunger: a curse bound by iron, bees, and the true name of something older than the land itself. Beside her stands Ambrose Vale—brooding, grief-marked, and tied to Graysmire as much by loss as by blood. Together, they must survive a house that devours without mercy…

What grows in the silence after power falls? Seryth was never meant to carry the Hollow’s voice. Raised by the Rite to obey, not question, she only knew two things: keep her head down—and survive. But when an ancient force stirs beneath the roots of a dying world, Seryth becomes the unlikeliest seed of rebellion: not with fire, but with breath. Not with blades, but with memory. Haunted by forgotten rites and hunted by the very order that once shaped her, Seryth’s path leads deep into the moss-veined catacombs of Lirien’s Reach.