Curses, Critters, and Other Complications

Sara has kept one secret from her husband for nine years: her mother is a witch. She never expected her daughters to be the ones to blow the whole thing wide open.When Ellen’s granddaughters arrive for the weekend with their pet guinea pig, Ralph, her cat familiar, Murgawth, immediately suspects something is off. Ellen, confirms it: Ralph is not a guinea pig at all, but a shapeshifter locked under a layered curse.Ellen and her witch bestie Margie quietly swap the creature for a bespelled pygmy rabbit and end up following a badger through a confusion spell into the north woods, where a stout old hag named Esmerelda Gimpler serves them tea and explains exactly how a cursed imp ended up in a pet shop two decades ago.Meanwhile, eight-year-old Krista is knowing things she shouldn’t. She knew what was inside her birthday presents. She knew the guinea pig had changed. And knowing things in advance at school is causing problems. Her father Nathan has noticed, and he wants answers his wife Sara is refusing to give.Set in the small town of Lancaster, Curses, Critters, and Other Complications is the first book in A Lancaster Witch Chronicle series. It follows a multigenerational family of witches, their familiars, non-witch husbands, and one reclusive hag as they navigate emerging gifts, long-buried secrets, and the quiet persistence of magic in a world that has mostly stopped looking for it. Warm, funny, and grounded in the rhythms of ordinary domestic life, this is a story about what happens when the truth you’ve been hiding turns out to be the best thing about you.