A Thousand Nights

Lo-Melkhiin killed three hundred girls before he came to her village looking for a wife. When she sees the dust cloud on the horizon, she knows he has arrived, and that he will want the loveliest girl: her sister. She vows she will not let her be next, and so she is taken in her sister's place, believing death will soon follow.

Lo-Melkhiin's court is a dangerous palace filled with pretty things: intricate statues with wretched eyes, exquisite threads to weave the most beautiful garments. She sees everything as if for the last time. But the first sun rises and sets, and she is not dead.

Night after night Lo-Melkhiin comes to her and listens to the stories she tells, and day after day she wakes at sunrise. Exploring the palace, she begins to unlock years of fear that have tormented and silenced a kingdom. Lo-Melkhiin was not always a cruel ruler. Something went wrong.

Far away in their village, her sister is mourning. Through her pain she calls upon the desert winds, conjuring a subtle, unseen magic. Back at the palace, the words the narrator speaks to Lo-Melkhiin every night take on a strange life of their own, small things at first: a dress from home, a vision of her sister. With each tale her power grows, until she dreams of bigger, more terrible magic, power enough to save a king if she can put an end to the rule of a monster.

A young adult fantasy retelling of the frame story of One Thousand and One Nights, published by Disney Hyperion in 2015. It is followed by the companion novel Spindle.