The Last Soul Among Wolves is the brilliant second installment in Melissa Caruso's Echo Archives series, a whip-smart adventure fantasy featuring cursed relics, sapphic romance, and a magical murder mystery.
All Kembral Thorne wants is to finish her maternity leave in peace. But when her best friend asks for help, she can't say no, even if it means a visit to a run-down mansion on an isolated island for a will reading. She arrives to find an unexpected reunion of her childhood friends-plus her once-rival, now-girlfriend Rika Nonesuch, there on a mysterious job. Then the will is read, and everything goes sideways.
Eight potential heirs, half of them Kem's oldest friends.
Three cursed relics.
The rules: one by one, the heirs will die.
The prize for the lone survivor: A wish. And wishes are always bad business.
To save their friends, Kem and Rika must race against the clock and descend into other realities once more. But the mansion is full of old secrets and new schemes, and soon the game becomes far more dangerous-and more personal-than they could have imagined. Melissa Caruso was born on the summer solstice and went to school in an old mansion with a secret door, but despite this auspicious beginning has yet to develop any known superpowers. Melissa has spent her whole life creating imaginary worlds and, in addition to writing, is also an avid LARPer and tabletop gamer.
She graduated with honors in creative writing from Brown University and has an MFA in fiction from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Melissa's first novel, The Tethered Mage, was shortlisted for a Gemmell Morningstar Award for best fantasy debut. Praise for the Echo Archives:
"A charming fantasy mystery that kept me guessing until the very last page-I completely adored this book and would read a dozen more of Kembral's adventures." -Shannon Chakraborty
"This book has everything you've been craving: sword fights, time loops, complicated feelings about parenthood, and banter with your sworn enemy. What an absolute delight!" -Alix E. Harrow
"A brilliant, breathlessly twisty fantasy adventure that I utterly adored. Melissa Caruso is a powerhouse." -Tasha Suri
" A masterpiece-filled with excitement, romance, and characters you would protect with your life. The wobbly time effects in this book reach past its pages, making hours of reading blink by in a moment. Unmissable!" -Andrea Stewart
"Equal parts sheer adventurous fun and creepy, dimension-bending tension, featuring a relatable and instantly engaging protagonist. This is totally unlike anything I've read before; Caruso has pulled off a wonderfully creative premise with skill and panache." -Freya Marske
