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Making Dresses is a Lost Art #newrelease #newparanormalhistorical

1/2/2023

 
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My grandmother was an amazing seamstress. She made matching dresses for myself and my sisters each Easter and Christmas. She made my prom dress as well and made this amazing pantsuit for my mother. She could make anything. Me? Not so much. I've done okay and made a dress for my daughter. It turned out fine. But I'm not the seamstress she was. 

Back in the day, you had to either be a seamstress or afford one. There wasn't a store you could visit to purchase the dress you wanted. Seamstresses were in demand. 

The heroine in THE GHOST IN HER is a seamstress. She is young and just starting out but has talent. But often it was a challenge to get into the business or to build up the clients so that you can afford the necessities of life. 

THE GHOST IN HER is an amazing tale of one young woman's search for her sister's baby. She faces some tough issues as she finds love. 

Blurb:
Seeing ghosts is literally in her blood.

Life is hard enough without having to deal with ghosts following you around every day. Maggie O’Connor wishes that she did not have psychic gifts but coming from a long line of Irish female seers, she never had a choice.

Faced with having to care for her departed sister’s orphaned baby, Maggie struggles to pay the rent while working for pennies at a local Bowery sweatshop. Her life goes from bad to worse when a wicked neighbor steals the baby.

Things look up when the handsome son of Maggie’s employer falls for her. Gershom understands that having psychic gifts does not necessarily make a woman crazy. If only the local judge agreed. When Maggie ends up at the New York City Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island, she must find a way to escape and return to Gershom’s loving arms.

Will Maggie be stuck in a madhouse forever? Even if she escapes, can she and Gershom rescue the lost baby? The obstacles seem insurmountable, but anything is possible with the assistance of ghostly helpers and Andrew Carnegie, one of America’s richest men.

Fairy Tales can come true- but not without suffering.


Love the Gilded Age but want more magic? Grab a copy of THE GHOST IN HER, the first book in the new Ungilded series featuring magic among the Bowery Streets. THE GHOST IN HER is a perfect match for fans of Harper Lin’s Southern Sleuth Series or Christina Skye’s Draycott Abbey series.

“The first book of Anika Savoy’s Ungilded series, The Ghost in Her is a dark, immersive fairy tale, dusted with Gothic whimsy. It is a story for the romantic and the history buff, a rich page-turner that forces us to consider the ongoing social ills that, to this day, continue to haunt us.”—Bestselling author- Mike Robinson.

EXCERPT:
In a poorly lit corner at the back of the store, a few wooden racks of used clothing pressed against a lopsided display of coffee grinders. Though I had only enough money to purchase the needles and thread, a pail of coal, and a few potatoes to boil in the days ahead, I browsed the racks in hopes of finding a secondhand dress.

Ah, the rapture a woman experiences when discovering the perfect garment at bargain cost! A masterfully tailored linen frock, colored buttercup yellow with sheer polka dot sleeves, shone like a diamond amongst the slosh of dungarees and muslin shifts. The buttercup dress was priced at only twenty-five cents, no doubt due to the mud stains that crusted the skirt’s frayed hemline. I could scrub the mud away, then remove the white satin sash wrapped around the dress’s waist and stitch it into a border to cover the skirt’s damaged hemline.

I imagined wearing the dainty number to the Cooper Institute on Monday night, greeting Mr. Bell like a sunlit perennial blooming in a field of books. I pressed the satin sash between my fingertips, knowing that I had to make a choice: pay the remainder of the rent that I still owed the landlord on Sunday night, or request an extension and purchase the buttercup dress.
​
Like any sensible woman, I bought the dress. 


Now available in ebook and print! Don't miss a chance to grab this book for yourself!

Buy Links:
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About the Author:
Anika Savoy attended McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and graduated with distinction in 1988 with a B.A. in English Literature. While at McGill, she won several creative writing contests. Thereafter, she wrote three historical romance novels.

In 1999, Anika changed course and decided to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming an attorney. She graduated from University of Cincinnati, College of Law with Deans Honors in 2001 and practiced law for almost twenty years. While working for two years as a judicial decision writer, she won the Excellence Award for the outstanding production of judicial decisions from the Federal Government. Drafting legal decisions that could withstand appeal honed her writing skills.

In 2018, her true crime book, HIS GARDEN, CONVERSATIONS WITH A SERIAL KILLER, was published by Wildblue Press. HIS GARDEN won several awards, including the 2020 NYC Big Book Award, and the 2020 Independent Press Award. It enjoyed a lot of media coverage, including several T.V. shows and many podcast interviews. The book was written under Anika’s real name, Anne K. Howard.

Now Anika has returned to her first love- writing historical romance. This time around she endeavors to add paranormal elements that take the reader into a fairy tale universe where ghosts and witches exist, and happy endings abound.
​
Anika and her husband, Chris, have been best friends for the last 35 years. They have two adult children. Anika lives in Connecticut with her husband, two dogs, and one eternal cat (at least 15 years old, but who’s counting?) Her hobbies include daily hikes with the dogs, when she thinks about what she will write that day, listening to well-crafted books on audible, and watching documentaries and films focusing on 19th and 20th century American history. She is an avid fan of Midnight Mass and Chapelwaite.
 
Find her at: www.anikasavoy.com
Her blog: http://www.anikasavoy.com/blog
Facebook.com/akhjd (my Anne K. Howard FB page)
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100072945222342 (my Anika Savoy page)
Twitter: Anne Howard@akhauthor
Twitter: Anika Savoy Author@AnikaSavoy
 


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