Haunted woman claws her way back to reality by reconnecting with her magical powers in The Talking Cure, a supernatural Yuletide follow-up to The Big Cinch.
Sean Joye Investigations
The Sean Joye Investigations series embeds readers in a magic-laced 1920s era St. Louis. The world has barely survived a brutal global war, disease pandemic, and rampant ethnic violence. The cosmic balance is off kilter, and corrupt energies seep through widening cracks in reality.
That foul rot has touched Sean Joye in myriad ways. A disillusioned veteran of 1922’s Irish Civil War, he traveled to America to escape supernatural attention, forget his assassin past, and forge a clean new life. Can Sean now master the magical abilities he has rejected for so long in time to protect the innocent and save his own skin?
The Talking Cure
In my 1920s supernatural noir novel, The Talking Cure, Violet Humphrey, a young woman confined to the Elsass Institute, must claw her way back to reality by investigating a murder at the asylum.
Isolated on the Illinois prairie with only her own thoughts and a persistent new voice in her head for company, Violet is accused of murder. She suspects her road to both freedom and recovery lies through confronting her painful past and solving the crime.
Magically summoned, Sean Joye, Violet’s “frenemy” from the first Sean Joye Investigations novel, The Big Cinch, skids through an ice storm to help her. Can they catch the killer and defy an eldritch horror before Violet loses her tenuous grasp on reality?
A self-contained story, The Talking Cure events occur after those of my other Sean Joye Investigations: The Resurrectionist (novella), Water of Life (novelette), and The Big Cinch (novel), as well as several short stories. These tales can be read in any order without confusion.
Comparing The Talking Cure
The Talking Cure will appeal to a wide range of readers:
- Fans of a wise-cracking mage, such as in Ben Aaronovitch’s The Hanging Tree, Steven Blackmoore’s Death Things, and Jim Butcher’s Skin Games
- Lovers of secret societies that worship mysterious, supernatural forces, such as in Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country, Victor LaValle’s Ballad of Black Tom, Cherie Priest’s Chapelwood, and China Mieville’s The Last Days of Paris
- Supporters of fiction that reflects cultural and sexual diversity, such as in Anne Bishop’s Lake Silence: The World of the Others and V.E. Schwab’s Shades of Light
“The Talking Cure is a marvelous story—an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery infused with a strong sense of the Weird… and a hearty dose of magic on the side. It’s ideal for all fans of the sinister, the surprising, and the strange.” —Cherie Priest, award-winning author of Boneshaker
Find The Talking Cure at these fine locations:
What do you think Sean and Violet should investigate next? Comment on the blog.
If you enjoyed reading about my new novel, you might like to hear from Sean Joye.
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Wolfhearted is also available as an Audible audiobook, here.
St. Louis Writers Guild just published Weird STL, an anthology celebrate the strange, spooky, and just plain wonderful stories of our hometown. This volume of short stories, poems, a play, and essays includes a Sean Joye universe short story, “Big Magick.” Joseph Arwald, one of the baddies from The Big Cinch, tells us what really happened to the Ferris Wheel from the St. Louis 1904 World’s Fair.
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The direct link to review Wolfhearted on Amazon is here, The Resurrectionist, here, and Water of Life, here. Thanks in advance.