The Book of Newts #1: Starwitch

Home, safety, and a place to belong – they seem so easy to find, at least for everyone but Amelia Blackwell and her sisters, who run from accusations of witchcraft at every turn.

It started so simply, with a book. No one might have predicted that a book apparently filled with pictures of newts might lead to so much trouble, but The Book of Newts is no ordinary volume detailing the taxonomy of amphibians. The magic book reveals its true nature only to Amelia, at the age of ten, teaching her advanced mathematics, science and engineering – subjects she would not otherwise have been exposed to.

Ironically, she and her sisters are accused of witchcraft for having built a horseless carriage, because to the ignorant villagers, there’s no difference between magic and science. They settle in a new land, only to find the same breed of persecution.

In an unusual ray of hope, they’re told of a distant kingdom that openly accepts witches, but shortly after they settle there, the light at the end of the tunnel turns out to be an awful house fire surrounding their gilded cage: they’re drafted into the local military, because their new nation uses witches as living weapons.

The sisters accept the idea that peace will never be found on the ground. Looking to the stars, Amelia builds a space vessel powered by magic and steam, to carry them to a brighter future, hopefully without the strife that’s always followed them.

Unfortunately, the people of the stars have their own worries: an ancient, undead pirate queen, who consumes the souls of powerful witches to extend her own life. The Dead Queen takes Amelia’s sisters and leaves the magically-weak engineer to die, all as a sick form of sport.

Will Amelia survive long enough to overcome this greatest of all threats and rescue her sisters, or will they become fuel to feed the waning magic of a woman that should have been dead centuries before?

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This is volume one of The Book of Newts.