The Poison Daughter

Every person Harlow Carrenwell kisses receives a dose of poison fresh from her lips — lethal, paralysing, or merely agonising, depending on what her family needs that night. As the youngest daughter of Lunameade's magical founding family, she is the weapon her parents reach for whenever someone stands in their way. What they do not know is that she also works for herself. Masked, she moves through the walled city as the vigilante its people call the Poison Vixen, hunting the men who abuse their wives and daughters — a campaign born out of what her beloved sister Aidia suffers at the hands of her husband, Lunameade's mayor Rafe Mattingly.

Then Harlow kisses a mark and he does not die. Worse, the one man alive who can survive her mouth is Henry Havenwood, her newly arranged betrothed, and he has just watched her work. Rather than expose her, Henry carries her off to his family's fortress in the mountains beyond the city walls, deep in vampire-haunted woods, and Harlow is left with an impossible task: make her husband fall in love with her before he can use what he knows, and keep her family and her city intact while she works out what he is really planning.

Sheila Masterson's seventh novel and first USA Today bestseller, The Poison Daughter is a standalone dark fantasy romance told in dual point of view — a marriage of inconvenience, a true enemies-to-lovers slow burn, feminine rage, and a great deal of blood. Self-published in October 2025, it was picked up by Zando's Slowburn imprint for a wide release in August 2026.