Ghost Orchid – COMING FALL of 2026 from Lake Union Publishing!

Twenty-eight-year-old Miranda Thomas, once high-achieving and now adrift, has just begun her first season at the Shark Valley Entrance Station of Everglades National Park. She soon realizes that park rangering isn’t the glamorous adventure or escape she’d imagined. Disappointed, and still grappling with the sudden loss of her best friend, Miranda seeks distraction with a man she knows isn’t right for her, Clay.

Miranda finds that Clay is able to talk her into just about anything, including driving deep into the Everglades to break into an old shack inhabited by a rumored witch along the Loop Road. Clay takes a strange looking root from the kitchen table, just as a gunshot fires from the back of the cabin.

Once home, Miranda realizes she dropped her cell phone on the way out of the cabin. She returns to apologize and ask for her phone back, and finds an old woman, Estelle, who waves her revolver at Miranda and asks if she plans to break in again. Miranda pleads for forgiveness and mentions she shouldn’t have agreed with Clay to come. Estelle softens and invites Miranda inside, beginning a deep and meaningful friendship where Estelle not only helps Miranda grieve while gently questioning the wisdom of her relationship with Clay, but begins to show Miranda the specifics of plant magic, speaking mysteriously about the secrets the plants keep.

Miranda soon realizes that many people want the information she now possesses—and will go to great lengths to get it—especially concerning that of the rare mythical ghost orchid, which may hold the power to bring people back from the dead.