The Secret Books of Paradys

Tanith Lee

In this first volume of a dark, spellbound series, Jehanine—once a peasant girl with nowhere safe to turn—is assaulted by her stepfather and then cast off by the brother she runs to find. Fleeing the countryside, she reaches the strange city of Paradys, only to discover that survival there comes with its own cruel bargains and hidden terrors. As she clings to the hope of belonging, a relentless search begins for a demonic creature seemingly beyond the reach of steel, sorcery, or prayer. Woven through Jehanine’s flight and endurance are themes of trauma, abandonment, and the thin line between faith and fear, rendered in Tanith Lee’s signature lyrical, gothic intensity.

Tanith Lee

In a shadowed, alternative Paris called Paradys, three intertwined novellas trace how desire, ambition, and cruelty echo through the city’s dark history. From a poet drawn into a nocturnal romance by a cursed ruby scarab, to a woman whose suffering and survival ignite a dangerous reckoning, to later lives shaped by power, obsession, and the seductive pull of forbidden beauty, each story reveals a different face of the same haunting world. Tanith Lee’s signature lyrical, gothic imagination turns love and fate into forces as volatile as magic, where beauty can wound and every choice carries a spectral consequence. Blending fantasy and horror with richly atmospheric storytelling, this collection explores themes of corruption, moral compromise, and the ways the past refuses to stay buried.