Overview

Ninth House meets Mexican Gothic in a dark academia, gothic mystery where the cards are stacked against reason-and the price of knowledge is blood. Dahlia Blackburne is a failing bookstore keeper and Tarot reader who relies on deductive reasoning-not magick-to cast her fortunes. When a stranger calling himself the Meister walks into her shop after closing and offers three times her normal rate for a reading, curiosity and her growing debts compel her to accept. But the reading reveals that the Meister has a far more dangerous proposition: infiltrate Foresyth Conservatory, an elite occult arts graduate school, and investigate the alleged suicide of brilliant but troubled student, Julian Earhardt. Desperate to care for her ailing mother after her father's recent death, Dahlia agrees to investigate. But inside Foresyth's rose-thorned walls, Dahlia is thrust into the school's ruthless academic Circle, a cadre of students including the seductive ""Trees,"" Aspen and Sequoia, who are obsessed with creating art that doesn't merely imitate life, but transcends it. As the line between performance and passion blurs, Dahlia must confront the truth about Julian, her peers, and a dangerous form of magick that isn't taught-but inherited. The cards at Foresyth have already been dealt . . . Now it's time for Dahlia to play her hand.

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A.L. Sterling (she/her) writes dark tales for bright minds. She is an award-winning scientist turned self-proclaimed ""word witch."" Her work blends gothic atmosphere, speculative mystery, and the aching longing of dark academia. She is the author of Foresyth Conservatory (October 2025), a gothic mystery set in 1920s at an elite occult graduate school, where tradition unravels under the weight of grief, power, and inherited secrets.Sterling wrote her first novel at thirteen and earned a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from North Carolina State University. She drafted Foresyth Conservatory between research papers and copious amounts of black coffee. Her fiction interrogates inherited systems of belief, explores feminine power in liminal spaces, and seeks out the haunting in the intellectual sublime.She writes for readers who crave emotional depth, intellectual danger, and stories that echo long after the final page. You can follow her on Instagram @a.l.sterling.

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