12 new August science fiction and fantasy releases to help wind down summer
By Lacy Baugher
August 2021 release: The Witch Haven – Sasha Payton Smith
The Last Magician meets The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy in this thrilling and atmospheric historical fantasy following a young woman who discovers she has magical powers and is thrust into a battle between witches and wizards.
Set in early twentieth-century New York, The Witch Haven follows the story of seventeen-year-old Frances Hallowell, a girl struggling to make ends meet in the wake of her brother’s mysterious death and her mother’s subsequent commitment to an asylum. Desperately unhappy in a dead-end job where she’s overworked and constantly leered at by her creepy boss, Frances doesn’t feel that life has much to offer her anymore.
But when she’s attacked one night while working late and a man ends up dead at her feet, Frances will find herself saved from arrest by a pair of strange women in dramatic capes – and whisked off to a mysterious school of witches that may help her solve Will’s murder.
The official synopsis offers more details about the story.
"In 1911 New York City, seventeen-year-old Frances Hallowell spends her days as a seamstress, mourning the mysterious death of her brother months prior. Everything changes when she’s attacked and a man ends up dead at her feet—her scissors in his neck, and she can’t explain how they got there. Before she can be condemned as a murderess, two cape-wearing nurses arrive to inform her she is deathly ill and ordered to report to Haxahaven Sanitarium. But Frances finds Haxahaven isn’t a sanitarium at all: it’s a school for witches. Within Haxahaven’s glittering walls, Frances finds the sisterhood she craves, but the headmistress warns Frances that magic is dangerous. Frances has no interest in the small, safe magic of her school, and is instead enchanted by Finn, a boy with magic himself who appears in her dreams and tells her he can teach her all she’s been craving to learn, lessons that may bring her closer to discovering what truly happened to her brother. Frances’s newfound power attracts the attention of the leader of an ancient order who yearns for magical control of Manhattan. And who will stop at nothing to have Frances by his side. Frances must ultimately choose what matters more, justice for her murdered brother and her growing feelings for Finn, or the safety of her city and fellow witches. What price would she pay for power, and what if the truth is more terrible than she ever imagined?"
The Witch Haven is available on August 31.