"POWDER & POISON is like biting into a decadent slice of cake and realizing that cake is filled with blood. Every page drips with an opulence and hunger that left me guessing right up until the very end. Jackson's debut not only gives voice to a woman whose voice was stolen from her, but also to the experiences and pain women around the world have faced since the beginning of time. Gorgeously creepy and laced with teeth." Teagan Olivia King, author of Spit Back the Bones and Bitterbloom
A psychological horror following the first weeks of Marie Antoinette's arrival at Versailles, where the glittering façade of royalty gives way to death and decay. Marie faces the horror of her new life, stumbling upon lifeless bodies, contorting herself to fit expectations, and facing herself and others from the blade of a knife. The story magnifies the atrocities against women throughout our history, leaning into Good For Her horror.
Marie Antoinette dreams of the decadent world that awaits her in France. Though stripped of her identity and all she knew from her life in Austria, Marie still carries the ominous warnings her missing sister left her, and an eerie voice that sings dark riddles to her from reflections.
Versailles draws her in with its glittering façade, but she immediately finds herself drowning in the suffocating rules of court, diseases running rampant in the palace, and a new husband who spends his time hunting and experimenting on corpses. Her fear of omens comes to light on her wedding night as she stumbles upon a body in the gardens, throat slit.
In a place where such things are to be covered up and swallowed down, this novel magnifies the atrocities against women throughout our repeated history of true horror, contorting to fit expectations, and facing the demons around and within us.
