The Midnight Network
The next novel from Maia Caron — forthcoming June 2027 from Doubleday Canada.
A group of women separated by time but united to fight a dark secret with the power to destroy nations.
For centuries, a sect of Germanic pagan priestesses have protected the innocent from corrupt rulers and witch hunters at Hochfelsen Fortress, high in the Austrian Alps.
But in October 1945, a greater evil arrives at the fortress, which is now operating as a safe house on the Nazi ratline. When two ex-SS officers arrive, bearing a mysterious steel box covered in runic symbols, the maid, Lara Rausche, is drawn into a tragic love affair when she stumbles upon a sinister legacy the Allies believed had died with Hitler.
Thirty-eight years later, in August 1983, Steffi von Baer—disturbed by the right wing political leaders in Europe arriving late at night to venerate the Fourth Reich in Hochfelsen’s chapel—disappears in the surrounding forest. When her friend, London antiques dealer Diana Smith is invited to the castle by Steffi’s family, she discovers that Canadian party girl, Kit Cavanaugh, has also been invited. Polar opposites, the women must come together when they’re stranded at the fortress—reportedly haunted by a seventeenth century witch who escaped the Inquisition—and are forced to clear themselves as suspects in Steffi’s disappearance. Only by a twist of fate do they hear Lara Rausche’s voice echo across time, drawing them into a deadly battle to expose Hochfelsen’s dark secret.