In a crumbling village of ghosts and grief, an assassin and a necromancer are drawn into a dangerous, intimate experiment to defy death—and loneliness.

A gothic horror story about losing the love of your life, So Beats a Hollow Heart follows a nameless assassin—a member of the feared Bloodcloaks—sent to rid a village of the necromancer who has been stealing its young women.

What the assassin finds is not the monster she expects, but a woman deep in grief, desperate to find a new body for the soul of her dead lover.

After her third experiment ends in failure, the necromancer—Isolde—turns her attention to the assassin. Neither woman can anticipate how profoundly they will be changed by Isolde's fourth and final experiment.

So Beats a Hollow Heart is the winner of the Cover Story Contest, hosted by Nicole Frail Books, LLC

Praise for So Beats a Hollow Heart

"A story of obsession and love gift-wrapped in death, So Beats a Hollow Heart delivers two powerful and flawed female protagonists ready to make each other bleed. This dark fantasy novella is an incisive, heart-wrenching look at loss and the lengths we may go to just to avoid facing the loneliness of being left behind."
—Valentina Cano Repetto, author of LOBA