The Archivist’s Curse

By Luna Asli Kolcu

Deal Ends: Mon 18th May

Aldermere Hall has been waiting for her.Elisabeth Hargrove arrives at the crumbling estate to marry a man she has never met — a union arranged by a family that has been selecting brides for three centuries. She carries a sketchbook left by the fifth bride, filled with things no one was supposed to draw. She is an archivist. She reads what documents try to hide.In the portrait gallery, eleven paintings show eleven women in the same dress, wearing the same impossible smile. The twelfth hook is waiting. The dress is aired and ready. And the roses — hundreds of white roses that should not be blooming in late September — are warm to the touch.The house is beautiful. Every account says so. Beautiful the way a jaw is beautiful when it opens.Elisabeth is the twelfth bride of Aldermere Hall. She has come with a plan. She has come with Annabel's sketchbook. And she will not make the same mistakes as the women who came before her.But Aldermere has plans of its own. And the house has never lost a bride it wanted to keep.Book One of the Rootbound Bride trilogy.For readers of Naomi Novik, Katherine Arden, and Alix E. Harrow. Gothic romantasy with the patience of a literary fairy tale.Arranged marriage, slow burn, strangers to lovers, sentient cursed estate, archivist heroine, gardener hero, three-century curse, dark fairy tale.Slow burn — first kiss in chapter 15. Low spice. One brief open-door scene, late in the book, literary in register. Plot-driven gothic fantasy with a love story underneath.The complete trilogy is free on Kindle Unlimited from April 28. Start with the free prequel novella, The Fifth Bride.