. . . amid the bloom of psychic abilities.
My new series, beginning with At the Table of Wolves.
Coming from Saga Press next summer!
THE MILIEU:
England. Spring, 1936. Magic has come into the world in the form of psi-abilities. These powers have broken through in a slow, subconscious tide since 1914, brought to the surface by the suffering of the Great War. The advent of this phenomenon is called the bloom. Talents occur in perhaps one in a thousand people. The full range of paranormal abilities is not yet known, but they include hypercognition, remote view, mesmerizing, hyperempathy, darkening and the spill, with strength classified from 1 to 10. Talents come into people at various stages of their lives, especially at adolescence. People still mistrust the bloom, with its paranormal gifts, both coveted and despised. Kim Tavistock is a 6 for the spill.
The Third Reich has been working for years to weaponize these powers. Now they have succeeded in a manner no one could have guessed.
THE STORY:
Kim Tavistock, 33 years old, has the spill, a Talent that–sometimes–compels people to confide in her. They tell their secrets. It will come in handy for espionage.
Kim is passionate about England, where she was born (she was raised in the US by her American mother), and is devoted to the memory of her older brother, Robert, killed at Ypres. Because of this, she despises Nazi apologists. Her father, Julian Tavistock, has become one of these, consorting with his fascist-leaning friends, including the poisonous London hostess, Georgi Aberdare.
While the Third Reich has been working for years to weaponize Talents, England has been slow to grasp their potential threat–and promise. However, clandestine research is now under way at the ultra-secret Monkton Hall, a country estate housing researchers and testing facilities. Among the test subjects is Kim Tavistock. When she wins the confidence of case worker Owen Cherwell, he recruits her into an effort to expose the head of Monkton Hall as a German spy.
Kim’s uses her career as a stringer for magazines to go on assignment for Owen Cherwell. Her first clandestine mission is to get a spill from Georgi Aberdare at the great country manor of Summerhill. There she will meet a charming and merciless undercover German agent, Erich von Ritter, and receive from him a spill that will lead her into the heart of a ruthless Nazi plot against Britain.
From von Ritter she discovers that the plot is led by one of England’s own. Is it in fact her own father? Has he gone over to the wolves?
In WWII there were several plans to use ice as a weapon in the English Channel. What Whitehall doesn’t know is that the world will soon feel the brunt of a devastating and unguessed-at weaponized Talent. One that can force a breech of England’s finest defense: its island isolation.
Kim must penetrate von Ritter’s operation, but there is only one way in. To join him.