The Quarter Queen

A Voodoo witch must navigate a magically and racially divided nineteenth-century New Orleans to save her mother—and the soul of the city itself—in this lush debut novel inspired by the life of Marie Laveau.

“A riveting read that does not shy away from both the light and the dark aspects of the supernatural.” —Essence (Most Anticipated Books of 2026)

“An edgy, intoxicating novel pulsing with the dark heartbeat of 1840s New Orleans and a fiery mother-daughter dynamic I won’t soon forget.” —Sarah Penner, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Apothecary

A Book Riot, Reactor, and Read Between the Spines Best Book of the Month Pick!

In 1843 New Orleans, the reigning Voodoo queen is Marie Laveau, feared by followers and enemies alike. Her daughter, Marie “Ree” Laveau the Second, is everything her formidable mother is not—spoiled, rebellious, and determined to defy her at every turn. But Ree’s world is shattered when she discovers Marie unconscious in the bayou, cursed by the exiled Voodoo king Jon the Conjurer—Marie’s former teacher, lover, and greatest enemy.

As Marie hovers near death, Ree races to uncover the hidden truths of her mother’s past in search of a cure. What she finds instead is a dangerous web of betrayal, buried alliances, and enemies closing in from every side. Complicating matters further is the return of Henryk Broussard, Ree’s long-lost childhood friend, now serving as a witch hunter for the Church and tasked with investigating her.

With a puritanical Brotherhood of alchemists, the slaveholding mayor of New Orleans, and dark forces circling ever closer, Ree must confront the secrets and demons that shaped her mother’s rise to power—before they consume her as well.

Told across alternating timelines between Ree’s desperate fight in the present and Marie Laveau’s rise to power twenty-five years earlier, The Quarter Queen is an intimate yet sweeping story of family, womanhood, magic, and survival, set against the richly haunted backdrop of nineteenth-century New Orleans.