Excerpt from The Otherwhere Post by Emily J. Taylor, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Excerpt
The Otherwhere Post by Emily J. Taylor

Maeve always carried the love letter with her. She knew every ink stroke by heart, that it took twenty-three seconds to unsheathe the brittle paper from the envelope and read the tender words penned by her mother to her father ages ago. It was all she had left of her parents.

Today, however, it sat like a weight at the base of her right pocket.

Tucking her ­rust-­red braid into her coat collar, Maeve hurried up the ­rain-­slicked cobblestones of Widdick's Close until she crested the hill near her flat.Autumn air clung like wet leaves to her tongue. Bleak ocean winds beat her cheeks, and the city of Gloam spread out before her: blackened stone university buildings tangled between steep roads that ran together like an ink spill. The city of Gloam in Leyland.

It was such an ugly world.

Maeve imagined she could see the two other known worlds of Inverly and Barrow wrapped over this one like the translucent sheets of tissue she used to package quills. The three known worlds appeared identical if you squinted, but truly comparing them was the same as searching for similarities between a fresh apple and a lump of hearth coal.

Unfortunate, considering she happened to be stuck in that lump of coal.

She pulled out the love letter, along with a train ticket she'd purchased just yesterday. The ticket took her ages to save for. It granted passage to the south coast of Leyland in exactly one week. In seven short days, she would kiss this decrepit city goodbye for good.

A smile tugged at her lips. She tucked the precious ticket back inside her pocket, then dragged a gloved finger along the love letter's tattered corner.

She dearly wished she had a single memory of her mother, but Aoife Abenthy had died from a wasting sickness when Maeve was a mere babe. Her father was a different matter entirely.

She'd discovered this letter in his things the week before she lost him, back when she wouldn't let him walk out the door without slipping her hands over his wiry shoulders and forcing him to hug her twice. Before she learned he was a twisted murderer.

She was only eleven years old. Now, at eighteen, she had lived with that knowledge for too many years.

Her fingers tightened, straining the envelope until it was on the verge of ripping. This love letter might have been written by her mother, but it belonged to him.

"Guess what, Father? I finally saved enough to buy a train ticket. I'm leaving your favorite city in one week's time. After that, I hope to never spend another minute of my life thinking of you."

A burst of lightning lit up the gray sky, as if her father were laughing at her. He'd perished in another world, but Maeve was half convinced his spiteful ghost resided here nonetheless, haunting her every step.

Trembling, she tucked the letter down into her pocket, beside the train ticket. Out of sight.

As much as she wanted to love something her mother wrote, she hated that letter. But she didn't dare get rid of it. The constant feel of the envelope against her hip bone served as a necessary reminder to be careful to never use her real name. To never speak it. If anyone discovered who she was, they would call the constabulary. Unless the families of her father's victims came for retribution first.

Maeve took a strangled breath, feeling the sickening weight of his crimes pressing against her ­lungs—­the shame of having to live in a world that he had tarnished.

At least she was leaving in a week. It might prove difficult to run away from the blood in her veins, but she would certainly try her best.

Excerpted from The Otherwhere Post by Emily J. Taylor. Copyright © 2025 by Emily J. Taylor. Excerpted by permission of G.P. Putnam's Sons. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.