Maiden and Her Monster

In a village haunted by a cursed forest that has taken girl after girl, Malka, the healer's daughter, has grown up watching her community suffer while the Ozmini Church shows up only to collect its tithe. When a clergy girl disappears and Malka's mother is accused of the killing, a zealot priest offers Malka a brutal deal: deliver the monster from the woods, or lose her mother to execution.

The creature Malka finds isn't what anyone imagined. She's a disgraced golem, exiled and inscrutable, who agrees to take the blame only if Malka first helps her free the imprisoned rabbi who created her. As the two work together, their bargain unravels a far more dangerous conspiracy, and Malka finds herself falling for the very "monster" she was raised to fear.

Rooted in the Jewish folklore of the Golem of Prague, the novel blends dark fantasy, sapphic romance, and political and religious intrigue into a debut about faith, memory, and who gets to decide what counts as monstrous.