Red Hen Press

Featured #1 on Kirkus Reviews’ “20 Science Fiction Fantasy Novels That Will Blow Your Mind.” 

Adrien Desfourneaux must survive his own failing mental health and a tenuous partnership with a dangerous ally in order to save the city of Astrum from a spreading curse.

Adrien Desfourneaux, magic professor and disgraced ex-physician, has discovered a conspiracy. Someone is inflicting magical comas on the inhabitants of the massive city of Astrum, and no one knows how or why. Caught between a faction of scheming magical academics and an explosive schism in the ranks of the Astrum’s power-hungry military, Adrien is swallowed by the growing chaos. Alongside Gennady, an unruly, damaged young soldier, and Malise, a brilliant healer and Adrien’s best friend, Adrien searches for a way to stop the spreading curse before the city implodes. He must survive his own bipolar disorder, his self-destructive tendencies, and his entanglement with the man who doesn’t love him back.

Combining a magical fast-paced plot with queer and mental health representation, Cursebreakers is a new force in the Fantasy genre. 

BOOK 2 OF THE CURSEBREAKERS SERIES

FEATURED ON KIRKUS REVIEWS’ 20 SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY NOVELS TO READ NOW

Author Madeleine Nakamura plunges readers back into her spellbinding series, where Professor Adrien Desfourneaux’s journey through peril, passion, and dark magic takes a thrilling new turn in Angel Eye.

"Nakamura has knocked it out of the park once again . . . A fast-paced return to Nakamura's magical world."—Kirkus *Starred Review*

“A queer, smart, bewitching read." —Meredith Katz, author of The Cybernetic Tea Shop

When a healer begins murdering hospital patients, Professor Adrien Desfourneaux discovers that the threat is far closer to him than he could have imagined.

Still recovering from a recent institutionalization and unable to trust his own mind or magic, Adrien is drawn into the witch hunt as suspicion falls upon those closest to him. The city’s inquisitors and witchfinders are losing control, the magicians are growing more and more resentful, and the scars from Adrien’s last brush with disaster refuse to fade. To put an end to the innocent deaths, to keep his dearest friends, and to prove himself worthy of a potential new romance, Adrien is forced to confront his own blind spots before he’s fatally ensnared by the angel of death’s machinations.

In Mexico City for a family funeral, Detective DJ Arias encounters a group of Robin Hood-style thieves who call themselves the Jaguars. Their activities reach across the border into Los Angeles with a Hollywood murder that entangles LA's elite anchthe nannies, housekeepers, and gardeners who serve them, and threatens DJ's own loved ones. A follow up to the mystery A Punishing Breed, A Shadow of Jaguars finds DJ and partner Bobby Talbot struggling to untangle a murder where Hollywood, wealthy powerbrokers, and an immigrant population struggle to coexist and survive. Throughout it all, his faithful dog Evidence is by his side.

In Mexico City for a family funeral, Detective DJ Arias encounters a group of Robin Hood-style thieves who call themselves the Jaguars. Their activities reach across the border into Los Angeles with a Hollywood murder that entangles LA's elite anchthe nannies, housekeepers, and gardeners who serve them, and threatens DJ's own loved ones. A follow up to the mystery A Punishing Breed, A Shadow of Jaguars finds DJ and partner Bobby Talbot struggling to untangle a murder where Hollywood, wealthy powerbrokers, and an immigrant population struggle to coexist and survive. Throughout it all, his faithful dog Evidence is by his side.

BOOK 1 OF THE CURSEBREAKERS SERIES, FEATURED #1 ON KIRKUS REVIEWS’ 20 SCIENCE FICTION FANTASY NOVELS THAT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND

Debut Author Madeleine Nakamura captivates readers with a tale of magic, adventure, and unexpected friendships in this thrilling fantasy, CURSEBREAKERS

“Superbly developed.”—Kirkus Reviews, STARRED
“An exciting read.”—Booklist 
“Outrageously good—phenomenal.”—Independent Book Review

Adrien Desfourneaux, professor of magic, must survive his own failing mental health and a tenuous partnership with a dangerous ally in order to save the city of Astrum from a spreading curse.

Adrien Desfourneaux, professor of magic and disgraced ex-physician, has discovered a conspiracy. Someone is inflicting magical comas on the inhabitants of the massive city of Astrum, and no one knows how or why. Caught between a faction of scheming magical academics and an explosive schism in the ranks of the Astrum’s power-hungry military, Adrien is swallowed by the growing chaos. Alongside Gennady, an unruly, damaged young soldier, and Malise, a brilliant healer and Adrien’s best friend, Adrien searches for a way to stop the spreading curse before the city implodes. He must survive his own bipolar disorder, his self-destructive tendencies, and his entanglement with the man who doesn’t love him back.

*Recommended in The New York Times*

A Punishing Breed, the first in a series of novels featuring Detective DJ Arias, is a murder mystery that takes place in Los Angeles, the city of angels, freeways, Santa Ana winds, and honeysuckle slithering through chain-link fences and perfuming LA's dark streets and neighborhoods. Detective Arias hunts for a murderer on a liberal arts campus that prides itself on its progressive curriculum but is rife with jealousy, racial and sexual tensions, and a hierarchy as real and destructive as a medieval fortress. DJ Arias, good at his job because he sees the worst in people, is challenged by the college community, a neighborhood recluse, and a young Latino gardener he sent to jail ten years ago for a hit-and-run accident. Through the course of his investigation, Arias will find out no one is who they appear to be. He begins to reclaim his humanity by adopting a dog he names Evidence and finding the clues to a crime born from a dark secret not contained in the past but alive in the present, which will cast destruction and murder on the denizens of the small liberal arts campus.

BOOK 2 OF THE CURSEBREAKERS SERIES

FEATURED ON KIRKUS REVIEWS’ 20 SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY NOVELS TO READ NOW

Author Madeleine Nakamura plunges readers back into her spellbinding series, where Professor Adrien Desfourneaux’s journey through peril, passion, and dark magic takes a thrilling new turn in Angel Eye.

"Nakamura has knocked it out of the park once again . . . A fast-paced return to Nakamura's magical world."—Kirkus *Starred Review*

“A queer, smart, bewitching read." —Meredith Katz, author of The Cybernetic Tea Shop

When a healer begins murdering hospital patients, Professor Adrien Desfourneaux discovers that the threat is far closer to him than he could have imagined.

Still recovering from a recent institutionalization and unable to trust his own mind or magic, Adrien is drawn into the witch hunt as suspicion falls upon those closest to him. The city’s inquisitors and witchfinders are losing control, the magicians are growing more and more resentful, and the scars from Adrien’s last brush with disaster refuse to fade. To put an end to the innocent deaths, to keep his dearest friends, and to prove himself worthy of a potential new romance, Adrien is forced to confront his own blind spots before he’s fatally ensnared by the angel of death’s machinations.

BOOK 2 OF THE CURSEBREAKERS SERIES

FEATURED ON KIRKUS REVIEWS’ 20 SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY NOVELS TO READ NOW

Author Madeleine Nakamura plunges readers back into her spellbinding series, where Professor Adrien Desfourneaux’s journey through peril, passion, and dark magic takes a thrilling new turn in Angel Eye.

"Nakamura has knocked it out of the park once again . . . A fast-paced return to Nakamura's magical world."—Kirkus *Starred Review*

“A queer, smart, bewitching read." —Meredith Katz, author of The Cybernetic Tea Shop

When a healer begins murdering hospital patients, Professor Adrien Desfourneaux discovers that the threat is far closer to him than he could have imagined.

Still recovering from a recent institutionalization and unable to trust his own mind or magic, Adrien is drawn into the witch hunt as suspicion falls upon those closest to him. The city’s inquisitors and witchfinders are losing control, the magicians are growing more and more resentful, and the scars from Adrien’s last brush with disaster refuse to fade. To put an end to the innocent deaths, to keep his dearest friends, and to prove himself worthy of a potential new romance, Adrien is forced to confront his own blind spots before he’s fatally ensnared by the angel of death’s machinations.

BOOK 1 OF THE CURSEBREAKERS SERIES, FEATURED #1 ON KIRKUS REVIEWS’ 20 SCIENCE FICTION FANTASY NOVELS THAT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND

Debut Author Madeleine Nakamura captivates readers with a tale of magic, adventure, and unexpected friendships in this thrilling fantasy, CURSEBREAKERS

“Superbly developed.”—Kirkus Reviews, STARRED
“An exciting read.”—Booklist 
“Outrageously good—phenomenal.”—Independent Book Review

Adrien Desfourneaux, professor of magic, must survive his own failing mental health and a tenuous partnership with a dangerous ally in order to save the city of Astrum from a spreading curse.

Adrien Desfourneaux, professor of magic and disgraced ex-physician, has discovered a conspiracy. Someone is inflicting magical comas on the inhabitants of the massive city of Astrum, and no one knows how or why. Caught between a faction of scheming magical academics and an explosive schism in the ranks of the Astrum’s power-hungry military, Adrien is swallowed by the growing chaos. Alongside Gennady, an unruly, damaged young soldier, and Malise, a brilliant healer and Adrien’s best friend, Adrien searches for a way to stop the spreading curse before the city implodes. He must survive his own bipolar disorder, his self-destructive tendencies, and his entanglement with the man who doesn’t love him back.

*Recommended in The New York Times*

A Punishing Breed, the first in a series of novels featuring Detective DJ Arias, is a murder mystery that takes place in Los Angeles, the city of angels, freeways, Santa Ana winds, and honeysuckle slithering through chain-link fences and perfuming LA's dark streets and neighborhoods.

Detective Arias hunts for a murderer on a liberal arts campus that prides itself on its progressive curriculum but is rife with jealousy, racial and sexual tensions, and a hierarchy as real and destructive as a medieval fortress. DJ Arias, good at his job because he sees the worst in people, is challenged by the college community, a neighborhood recluse, and a young Latino gardener he sent to jail ten years ago for a hit-and-run accident. Through the course of his investigation, Arias will find out no one is who they appear to be. He begins to reclaim his humanity by adopting a dog he names Evidence and finding the clues to a crime born from a dark secret not contained in the past but alive in the present, which will cast destruction and murder on the denizens of the small liberal arts campus.

*Recommended in the New York Times*

A Punishing Breed, the first in a series of novels featuring Detective DJ Arias, is a murder mystery that takes place in Los Angeles, the city of angels, freeways, Santa Ana winds, and honeysuckle slithering through chain-link fences and perfuming LA's dark streets and neighborhoods.

Detective Arias hunts for a murderer on a liberal arts campus that prides itself on its progressive curriculum but is rife with jealousy, racial and sexual tensions, and a hierarchy as real and destructive as a medieval fortress. DJ Arias, good at his job because he sees the worst in people, is challenged by the college community, a neighborhood recluse, and a young Latino gardener he sent to jail ten years ago for a hit-and-run accident. Through the course of his investigation, Arias will find out no one is who they appear to be. He begins to reclaim his humanity by adopting a dog he names Evidence and finding the clues to a crime born from a dark secret not contained in the past but alive in the present, which will cast destruction and murder on the denizens of the small liberal arts campus.