Welcome to Picaroon Books! We publish historical fiction with a Gothic twist.

Our first title, coming soon, is The Tale of the Scry Twins, by Paul Van Heest.


THE TALE OF THE SCRY TWINS

When an ominous purple fog marks a new set of twins, it reawakens a blood feud.

New Jersey, 1738. Peddler Sage Arsenault returns to the place of his youth determined to win a property auction and restore his family's reputation. But David Scry, once his friend and now the heir to the region's most powerful family, vows to oppose him. Sage cannot understand David's malice, but he recognizes the echoes of the past from the infamous tale of the Scry twins. Telling of the birth of David and his sister in an earlier fog — and her death at the hands of Sage's uncle.

Then Sage's wife Mara bears her own twins, a boy with an unnatural birthmark and a girl with deformities, and the tale casts its shadow over a new generation. Faced with rampant superstitions, Sage champions the girl-twin. At the same time, his rivalry with David escalates into mob violence with a public whipping, a kidnapping, and a wolf-rout.

Now he will stop at nothing to unearth secrets buried in the old tale. Secrets that could explain his former friend's hostility and the markings on Mara's twins, or could doom them all…

Epic, eerie, and hauntingly American, The Tale of the Scry Twins is a novel about the weight of family in our lives.


If you have any questions about The Tale of the Scry Twins, please send an email to [email protected]