THE QUEEN OF THE CROSSROADS: A Novel of Inherited Power Hardcover – January 30, 2026

When folklorist Jazmin Marrow arrives in New Orleans, she intends to study belief—not become part of it.Drawn to the legend of Marie Laveau, she begins documenting the city’s spiritual landscape: the offerings left at forgotten shrines, the rituals practiced in quiet corners, the stories tourists mistake for performance. But beneath the surface, something is shifting. The boundaries between living and dead feel thinner here. The prayers don’t fade. And the city seems to be watching her in return.Then the Queen dies.What Jazmin thought was myth reveals itself as inheritance. Marie Laveau was not a legend, but a role—one passed from woman to woman, generation after generation. And somehow, impossibly, the mantle has chosen her.At first, the power feels like purpose. She can hear the prayers. She can ease suffering. She can hold what others cannot. But the work comes with a cost. The more she carries, the more she loses—memories slipping away, identity unraveling, her life dissolving into the function she now serves.As devotion across the city grows into something overwhelming, Jazmin must confront the truth at the heart of the crossroads:The Queen is not meant to remain whole.And if she cannot find a way to hold both the city and herself, she will become just another voice in the lineage—another name carried forward, long after the woman behind it is gone.THE QUEEN OF THE CROSSROADS is a literary urban fantasy novel about spiritual labor, memory, and the cost of becoming necessary in a world where someone must carry what no one else can.For readers of The City We Became, Mexican Gothic, and Ninth House. Read more