For Ages
12 to 99

House of Roots and Ruin is a part of the SISTERS OF THE SALT collection.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A modern masterpiece, this is a classic Gothic thriller-fantasy from bestselling author Erin A. Craig, about doomed love, menacing ambition, and the ghosts that haunt us forever.

In a manor by the sea, one sister is still cursed.

Despite dreams of adventures far beyond the Salann shores, seventeen-year-old Verity Thaumas has remained at her family’s estate, Highmoor, with her older sister Camille, while their sisters have scattered across Arcannia.

An Excerpt fromHouse of Roots and Ruin

1

The paintbrush was too wet.

Pigment concentrated through the boar-­hair bristles, sluicing out in irregular blots and smudging the line I’d wanted crisp.

“Hold still,” I murmured, barely moving my lips as I dabbed the brush on a rag, lest I somehow jar the moment before me and lose its magic forever. “Just one minute more.”

The corner of Artie’s lips trembled as if fighting the urge to break into a grin.

“I’m almost finished,” I promised. “Just . . .” I flicked the brush across the canvas, capturing the gleam of impish merriment brightening my nephew’s eyes. “There. It’s perfect.”

“I want to see! I want to see!” Artie exclaimed, falling out of his carefully arranged pose and tumbling over himself as he dashed behind the easel. His eyebrows fell. “That’s not what I look like. Is it?”

I studied the rendering with a critical eye before glancing back to the little boy before me. Thick waves of dark hair like mine, like most Thaumases, but with his father’s button nose. “I think it’s a fine likeness.”

“Very fine,” a voice affirmed from the…

Under the Cover