The owner of a mythical creature café and an entitled wizard begrudgingly team up to save the world in a cozy fantasy of found family and burgeoning magic by the author of the Winter Dark series.

Mythical Creature Café owner Faedra Weslenberg has a lot on her plate. Besides brewing tea and baking scones for her loyal clientele of humans, fauns, and trolls (she won’t share her recipe, don’t ask), she facilitates the adoptions of baby dragons and pegasi, all while raising her thirteen-year-old niece, Wilhelmina, and battling mysterious life-threatening allergies to the outside world.

So when Emerens Ward, the entitled wizard who owns her lapsed mortgage, seizes the café, she is really not in the mood. Emerens allows Faedra to stay on as proprietor, and their begrudging partnership slowly turns into something more.

But dangerous Faery Roads keep opening in the café, the morally ambiguous Wizards’ Council is breathing down Emerens’s neck, and Faedra’s estranged sister reappears, wanting custody of Wilhelmina. When Faedra uncovers a secret that could save or break the world, she must decide what she’s willing to sacrifice to save the family she has chosen—and has chosen her.

© 2027 by Joanna Ruth Meyer, all rights reserved.

Joanna Ruth Meyer is the author of When the Light Returns and While the Dark Remains in the Winter Dark series, the Endahr Chronicles, and the Oldest Magic series, which includes the critically acclaimed Echo North. She lives in Mesa, Arizona, with her husband, son, two orange cats, and a giant grand piano named Prince Imrahil. Joanna loves forests and rainstorms and stories that make her feel things, and in all likelihood, she’s drinking tea right now. For more information, visit www.joannaruthmeyer.com.