MAGGIE AND ARTHUR'S MAGIC MOMENT

A dangerous spell gone wrong forces the kindhearted professor of incantations to share tight quarters with her magical college's leading and most brooding alchemist.

Despite the college's budget cuts that slashed her syllabus, Linguistics and Incantations professor Maggie Linden has almost made it to the end of the spring semester. To celebrate, Maggie attends a magical masquerade on Beltane. Maybe the end-of-year frenzy explains why she kissed a masked stranger at the festival, though her celebration may have come too soon.

An accident in the lab of famous (and famously broody) alchemist Arthur Taliesin sets loose a dangerous, haunting magic called a pall that renders the nicer parts of their academic building uninhabitable. Maggie is assigned to share her tiny basement office with none other than Taliesin himself. With his insufferable attitude and unfortunate good looks, Arthur makes it impossible for Maggie to concentrate on anythingher research, her students' final exams, or tracking down her mysterious May Day suitor.

She'll do anything to get Arthur out of her office. Including offering to help him reverse the magic that threatens the school. But Maggie is starting to realize her officemate may not be the conceited grump he pretends to be. In fact, much of what she thinks is true about Arthur is merely a mask.

Leslie René (she/her) is a Virginia-based writer and editor. During the day, she is a health and science editor. At night, she writes fantasy novels with a bit of romance and romance novels with a generous helping of magic. She has a lifelong love of languages and is an experienced translation editor (English to Spanish) and translator (Spanish to English). Leslie loves to get lost in a good book, go to concerts, and stitch yarn and thread into something pretty. Her happy place is playing in the garden with her family.