Bloodlines

Cassie didn't want to spend the last week of summer in Briarwick. It's a village in Northumberland she's never been to, with no signal and nothing to do, and her gran is the kind of woman who gives you local folklore books instead of gift vouchers. Not exactly a holiday. But there's an unlocked attic hatch and a trunk that clearly wants to be opened, and inside it a handmade family tree running from 1778 to the present, dense with names and dates and symbols. Four of them, recurring beside the Hartwood names — her family's name — that her gran calls the guilt ones. And a paragraph in fresh ink, written for her specifically: If she finds this — and she will, because she has always had the instinct for looking — then she must know that the marks are warnings. In 1643, members of the Hartwood family gave testimony that sent five women to their deaths. Not out of fear or confusion — out of deliberate, cold-eyed choice. The families of those women never forgave it. They never left the village. And the binding they placed on the Hartwood bloodline three hundred and eighty years ago has been collecting interest ever since. Now the village knows Cassie is here. There are symbols appearing on windows. Tokens on the landing floor. Figures watching from the treeline. And a stone circle in the woods where the debt was made — and where, if the right Hartwood stands in the right place and speaks the full truth, it might finally be answered. Atmospheric, grounded, and built on the specific weight of inherited guilt, Bad Bloodlines is a YA historical mystery for readers who want their magic rooted in something real. For fans of The Inheritance Games, Sorcery of Thorns, and A Discovery of Witches. Ages 14 and up.