Projections
February 13, 2024, Tor
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S. E. Porter, critically-acclaimed YA author of Vassa in the Night, bursts onto the adult fantasy scene with her adult novel that is sure to appeal to fans of Jeff VanderMeer and China Mieville.
Love may last a lifetime, but in this dark historical fantasy, the bitterness of rejection endures for centuries.
As a young woman seeks vengeance on the obsessed sorcerer who murdered her because he could not have her, her murderer sends projections of himself out into the world to seek out and seduce women who will return the love she denied―or suffer mortal consequence. A lush, gothic journey across worlds full of strange characters and even stranger magic.
Sarah Porter’s adult debut explores misogyny and the soul-corrupting power of unrequited love through an enchanted lens of violence and revenge.
“One of THE most singular fantasy novels I’ve ever read, a realm-and time-spanning speculative feminist novel that is, at its core, an indictment of male entitlement masquerading as weaponized unrequited “love.””―Melissa Albert, author of Our Crooked Hearts
“An utterly original, fiercely feminist Alice in Wonderland gothic tale.”―Olesya Gilmore, author of The Witch and the Tsar
“S. E. Porter is a genius, and Projections is a dark garden of kaleidoscopic delights.”―Jon Evans, author of Exadelic
“A luscious, dual-voiced story of vengeance. . . .The exquisite language, well-honed characters, and various historical settings will draw in fans of unusual ghost stories.”―Booklist, starred review
“This story will haunt readers long after they close the book…Within an intricately built fantasy world, Porter takes a character that had all agency unwillingly taken away from her and gives her an incredible voice.”―Library Journal
“Readers will cheer for Catherine to exact her revenge and reclaim her agency in the afterlife. This darkly magical historical should win Porter some new fans.”―Publishers Weekly
“S.E. Porter’s first book for adults might as well have been called Men Ain’t Shit: A Novel. Projections is a dark fantasy exploration of misogyny and vengeance and womanhood, and is absolutely one for all the angry girls out there.”―Reactor
“Emotionally evocative and visually stunning, Projections is the kind of novel that makes you long for a high-budget adaptation.”—Crime Reads
Never-Contented Things
March 19, 2019 · Tor Teen
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Seductive. Cruel. Bored
Be wary of…
Never-Contented Things
A Novel of FaeryPrince and his fairy courtiers are staggeringly beautiful, unrelentingly cruel, and exhausted by the tedium of the centuries―until they meet foster-siblings Josh and Ksenia. Drawn in by their vivid emotions, undying love for each other, and passion for life, Prince will stop at nothing to possess them.
First seduced and then entrapped by the fairies, Josh and Ksenia learn that the fairies’ otherworldly gifts come at a terrible price―and they must risk everything in order to reclaim their freedom.
“Sarah Porter is a genius. Her language is lush and dangerous, and her books burn with the beautiful, ferocious intensity of a bonfire in the darkest night. Read Never-Contented Things with the lights on. Then read it again.”―Brittany Cavallaro, New York Times bestselling author of A Study in Charlotte
“Sarah Porter’s Never-Contented Things creates a creepy new world like none I’ve seen before. Eerie, edgy, and filled with mystery, Porter takes us to the depths of the magical and psychological.”―Danielle Paige, New York Times bestselling author of Dorothy Must Die
When I Cast Your Shadow
September 12th 2017 · Tor Teen
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Dashiell Bohnacker was hell on his family while he was alive. But it’s even worse now that he’s dead….
After her troubled older brother, Dashiell, dies of an overdose, sixteen-year-old Ruby is overcome by grief and longing. What she doesn’t know is that Dashiell’s ghost is using her nightly dreams of him as a way to possess her body and to persuade her twin brother, Everett, to submit to possession as well.
Dashiell tells Everett that he’s returned from the Land of the Dead to tie up loose ends, but he’s actually on the run from forces crueler and more powerful than anything the Bohnacker twins have ever imagined…..
“You’ll never think of your nightmares the same way again. Darkly seductive. Sarah Porter’s writing glitters and her storytelling stuns in this twisted tale of siblings, love, and death.”—Stephanie Garber, New York Times bestselling author of CARAVAL
“Sarah Porter’s darkly imaginative WHEN I CAST YOUR SHADOW intrigues from the start. Tragic and engrossing, filled with nightmarish dreamscapes and menacing villains, it also treads the tender terrain of family, and the strange and sometimes dysfunctional ties between siblings. Highly recommended!” —Kendare Blake, New York Times bestselling author of THREE DARK CROWNS
Tentacle and Wing
October 2017 · Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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Twelve-year-old Ada is a Chimera, born with human and animal DNA thanks to a genetic experiment gone wrong. Because being a “kime” is believed to be contagious, she has kept her condition—complete with infrared vision—hidden. But a surprise test outs her, and Ada is shipped off to a quarantined school for kimes.
There Ada meets kids of many different shapes, stripes, and appendages, such as a girl with dragonfly wings and a seal-boy. As she adjusts to her new life, Ada senses that the facility is keeping a secret that could upend everything the world knows about Chimeras. But will someone put a stop to her efforts to uncover the truth?
Vassa in the Night
September 20th 2016 · Tor Teen
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In the enchanted kingdom of Brooklyn, the fashionable people put on cute shoes, go to parties in warehouses, drink on rooftops at sunset, and tell themselves they’ve arrived. A whole lot of Brooklyn is like that now—but not Vassa’s working-class neighborhood.
In Vassa’s neighborhood, where she lives with her stepmother and bickering stepsisters, one might stumble onto magic, but stumbling out again could become an issue. Babs Yagg, the owner of the local convenience store, has a policy of beheading shoplifters—and sometimes innocent shoppers as well. So when Vassa’s stepsister sends her out for light bulbs in the middle of night, she knows it could easily become a suicide mission.
But Vassa has a bit of luck hidden in her pocket, a gift from her dead mother. Erg is a tough-talking wooden doll with sticky fingers, a bottomless stomach, and a ferocious cunning. With Erg’s help, Vassa just might be able to break the witch’s curse and free her Brooklyn neighborhood. But Babs won’t be playing fair. . . .
Inspired by the Russian folktale Vassilissa the Beautiful and Sarah Porter’s years of experience teaching creative writing to New York City students.
“Brooklyn is an enchanted kingdom where most aspire to arrive—most of it, that is, the exception being Vassa’s working-class neighborhood, where the white teen lives with her stepmother and stepsisters, struggling with the feeling that she does not belong. In Vassa’s neighborhood, magic is to be avoided, and the nights have mysteriously started lengthening…. Vassa’s narration is smart and sassy but capable of wonder, however familiar she’s become with Brooklyn’s magic. In this urban-fantasy take on the Russian folk tale “Vassilissa the Beautiful,” Porter weaves folk motifs into a beautiful and gripping narrative filled with magic, hope, loss, and triumph. An enthralling, magic-tinged read about home, family, love, and belonging.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“With a deft hand, lovely prose, and an eye for details, Porter reworks the Russian story of Vasilisa the Beautiful, setting it in an industrial Brooklyn where magic seeps into the mundane. There’s plenty of body horror here—Babs’ minions are the reanimated hands of corpses, she traps Night in human form, and the heads of shoplifters sit on pikes around the store—but the end result is an ethereal, almost dreamlike fairy tale that generates a magic all its own.” —Booklist, starred review
“This stand-alone urban fantasy is inspired by the Russian fairy tale “Vassilissa the Beautiful.” Although Vassa is described as incredibly pale, the rest of the book is populated with characters who are realistically diverse for its urban location. Evocative settings and imaginery help bring this bizarre corner of Brooklyn to life. Vassa is a cynical, no-nonsense character who is quick to make jokes and take risks with the delightfully sharp-tongued Erg at her side. A deliberate lack of romantic tension makes this a refreshing read, and elements of traditional horror blend well with high-concept fantasy in this surprising and engaging tale….A must-have for YA urban fantasy collections.” —School Library Journal, starred review
“Porter (the Lost Voices trilogy) delivers a suspenseful reinvention of the Russian fairy tale “Vassilissa the Beautiful,” set in a darkly magical version of present-day Brooklyn…. [A] feverishly imagined and deliciously surreal adventure.” —Publishers Weekly
“Bizarre, beautiful, and richly imagined. Sarah Porter weaves a dark, thoroughly modern fairytale crackling with wit and magical mayhem that would make Baba Yaga proud.” —Leigh Bardugo, New York Times bestselling author of the Grisha Trilogy
“Sarah Porter’s Vassa in the Night is an enchantingly twisted modern fairy tale, perfect for those who prefer Grimm to Disney. Inventive, darkly magical and beautifully written, it will stay with me for a long time.” —Kendare Blake, author of Anna Dressed in Blood and The Goddess War trilogy
Lost Voices
July 4th 2011 · Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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What happens to the girls nobody sees—the ones who are ignored, mistreated, hidden away? The girls nobody hears when they cry for help?
Fourteen-year-old Luce is one of those lost girls. After her father vanishes in a storm at sea, she is stuck in a grim, gray Alaskan fishing village with her alcoholic uncle. When her uncle crosses an unspeakable line, Luce reaches the depths of despair. Abandoned on the cliffs near her home, she expects to die when she tumbles to the icy, churning waves below. Instead, she undergoes an astonishing transformation and becomes a mermaid.
A tribe of mermaids finds Luce and welcomes her in—all of them, like her, lost girls who surrendered their humanity in the darkest moments of their lives. The mermaids are beautiful, free, and ageless, and Luce is thrilled with her new life until she discovers the catch: they feel an uncontrollable desire to drown seafarers, using their enchanted voices to lure ships into the rocks.
Luce’s own talent at singing captures the attention of the tribe’s queen, the fierce and elegant Catarina, and Luce soon finds herself pressured to join in committing mass murder. Luce’s struggle to retain her inner humanity puts her at odds with her friends; even worse, Catarina seems to regard Luce as a potential rival. But the appearance of a devious new mermaid brings a real threat to Catarina’s leadership and endangers the very existence of the tribe. Can Luce find the courage to challenge the newcomer, even at the risk of becoming rejected and alone once again?
Lost Voices is a captivating and wildly original tale about finding a voice, the healing power of friendship, and the strength it takes to forgive.
Waking Storms
July 3rd 2012 · Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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After parting ways with her troubled mermaid tribe, Luce just wants to live peacefully on her own. But her tranquility doesn’t last long: she receives news that the tribe is on the verge of collapse and desperately needs her leadership. The tribe’s cruel queen wants Luce dead. Dorian, the boy Luce broke mermaid law to save, is determined to make her pay for her part in the murder of his family. And while the mermaids cling to the idea that humans never suspect their existence, there are suddenly ominous signs to the contrary.
But when Luce and Dorian meet, they start to wonder if love can overpower the hatred they know they should feel for each other. Can Luce fulfill her rightful role as queen of the mermaids without sacrificing her forbidden romance with Dorian?
The Twice Lost
July 2nd 2013 · Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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Mermaids have been sinking ships and drowning humans for centuries, and now the government is determined to put an end to the mermaid problem—by slaughtering all of them. Luce, a mermaid with exceptionally threatening abilities, becomes their number-one target, hunted as she flees down the coast toward San Francisco.
There she finds hundreds of mermaids living in exile under the docks of the bay. These are the Twice Lost: once-human girls lost first when a trauma turned them into mermaids, and lost a second time when they broke mermaid law and were rejected by their tribes. Luce is stunned when they elect her as their leader. But she won’t be their queen. She’ll be their general. And they will become the Twice Lost Army—because this is war.