In the Roses of Pieria

Bookseller recommendation

“Clara is an adjunct professor at a small college with little hope of ever paying off her student loans, let alone getting to publish anything significant on her chosen area of study, the little known, briefly lived city-state of Nektropolis. So when she's offered a job out of the blue—to catalogue and translate more artifacts from Nektropolis than she even knew existed, for more money than she can imagine—by a wealthy recluse named Agatha Montague, she thinks she'd be nuts to pass it up. And it doesn't hurt that she starts to grow close to Agatha's assistant, Fiadh. But in spite of all of that, she can't help noticing the strangeness of her arrangement with her employer, nor the fact that the correspondence she's translating between two women seems to be lasting longer than a typical human lifespan. This incredible book by Anna Burke is a lush supernatural horror wrapped in a dark academia cover, and I cannot speak high enough about it! The characters are rich and layered, the prose incredible and the world building—particularly the alternate history she creates—is phenomenal. The way she handles the supernatural world is a game changer for me. And Savannah Rivers' narration of the story is nothing short of incredible. Fantastic! ”

— Alex • Words Worth Books