Cover Reveal: The Spectral City by Leanna Renee Hieber

Happy Thursday to all! We are delighted to be hosting the cover reveal for Leanna Renee Hieber’s new book, The Spectral City, along with a few words from the author herself <3

Without further ado, behold! The smugglerific cover!

The Cover:

About the book:

Solving crime isn’t only for the living.

In turn-of-the century New York City, the police have an off-the-books spiritual go-to when it comes to solving puzzling corporeal crimes . . .

Her name is Eve Whitby, gifted medium and spearhead of The Ghost Precinct. When most women are traveling in a gilded society that promises only well-appointed marriage, the confident nineteen-year-old Eve navigates a social circle that carries a different kind of chill. Working with the diligent but skeptical Lieutenant Horowitz, as well as a group of fellow psychics and wayward ghosts, Eve holds her own against detractors and threats to solve New York’s most disturbing crimes as only a medium of her ability can.

But as accustomed as Eve is to ghastly crimes and all matters of the uncanny, even she is unsettled by her department’s latest mystery. Her ghostly conduits are starting to disappear one by one as though snatched away by some evil force determined to upset the balance between two realms, and most important—destroy the Ghost Precinct forever. Now Eve must brave the darkness to find the vanished souls. She has no choice. It’s her job to make sure no one is ever left for dead.

A few words about The Spectral City from the author:

Hello friends, I’m so excited to be sharing this incredible cover with you today, and so grateful to be here with The Book Smugglers because this site has been a part of my career since my debut in 2009 with The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker. We’ve all done a lot since those early days and I’m so blessed to have had such valuable, insightful voices—who also happen to be kind, generous, talented, rock-star people doing amazing things in the industry—still here with me today in introducing this exciting new chapter. Thank you Ana and Thea, you’re an everlasting boon to the book world! And thank you, dear readers, for being here for the decade!

As many of you know, each of my Gaslamp Fantasy series contain crossover characters that appear from one to the next, sweeping in and out of dark, stormy nights as they unravel ongoing paranormal conundrums. Fans of my Magic Most Foul saga and my Eterna Files series will find familiar faces here in The Spectral City. Those new to my work I hope will meet new friends in these pages; people from inclusive walks of life and varied identities all working together to make positive difference in a very haunted New York City as the 19th century comes to a close.

I’ve pitched the Spectral City series as the show “Medium” meets The Alienist (my favorite novel). When it comes to my books, they are my love stories to genre, to the Gothic, to trope and inversion, honoring my favorite things in theme and setting, all with casts of quirky characters doing their best in a difficult world.

In focusing this series on nineteen-year-old Eve Whitby, daughter of Natalie and Jonathon Whitby, Lord and Lady Denbury from my Magic Most Foul saga, I wanted to explore the life of a young woman whose best friends are her grandmother, Evelyn Northe-Stewart, and a ghost her own age. What kind of trauma might she go through if she nearly loses them both, the two souls who understand her best? I’ve always had a very strong relationship with my elders and mentors in my own life, I treasure writing friendships, mentor bonds and especially writing older women who are fierce and full of life at any age. The constant theme through all my books; that life never really ends after death, it just changes, is a concept that won’t let me go. So, I keep turning the gem to see a new facet, keep exploring the questions of the Undiscovered Country, keep shifting the lens to examine a new focus. Choosing to focus in on a small group of mediums and their loyal ghosts working for the NYPD in the last year of a tumultuous century was too tempting to pass up.

The characters in this novel came on strong for me, those who were familiar to me reasserted themselves boldly and those who I met for the very first time felt like old friends. They have continued to surprise me through this process and I’m so excited to see how it will all unfold. I can’t wait to have all of you with me on this next eerie, ghostly, mysterious journey through this country’s greatest metropolis. Cheers and as always, happy haunting!

—Leanna Renee Hieber

About the author:

Actress, playwright and author Leanna Renee Hieber is the award-winning, bestselling author of Gothic Victorian Fantasy novels for adults and teens. Her Strangely Beautiful saga, beginning with The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker, hit Barnes & Noble and Borders Bestseller lists and garnered numerous regional genre awards, with new revised editions from Tor Books now available. Darker Still was named an American Bookseller’s Association “Indie Next List” pick and a Scholastic Book Club “Highly Recommended” title. Her new Gaslamp Fantasy saga, The Eterna Files and Eterna and Omega, is now available from Tor Books. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies such as Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells, Willful Impropriety, The Mammoth Book of Gaslamp Romance, featured on Tor.com and she writes for Criminal Element.

A four-time Prism Award winner for excellence in the genre of Fantasy Romance, Leanna’s books have been selected for national book club editions and translated into languages such as Complex Chinese, German and Polish. A proud member of performer unions Actors Equity and SAG-AFTRA, she lives in New York City where she is a licensed ghost tour guide and has been featured in film and television on shows like Boardwalk Empire. She is represented by Paul Stevens of the Donald Maass agency and is active on Twitter @leannarenee

The Spectral City is out on November 27, 2018