After Midnight — Kirstyn McDermott

After Midnight is a tale of royalty, bloodlines, and royal slippers from the award-winning Kirstyn McDermott, sure to appeal to fans of Catherynne M. Valente and Theodora Goss. The Queen who'd once swept up the cinders is exiled to a distant wing of the palace, replaced by a younger, prettier girl who can bear her King an heir. Unwilling to accept the rapid deterioration of her power and desperately clinging to fraying strands of sanity, the exiled Queen journals the choices that led to her sorry state... and those she must make in order to reclaim her rightful place in the kingdom. But there's more than one prisoner in the castle, and the conspiracy that draws tight around Queen and rival involves graver threats than a return to poverty.After Midnight is the third novella in Kirstyn McDermott's Never Afters series. Dark, powerful, and brimming with magic, these tales weave a reimagined world in which fairy-tale girls grow up to find both love and heartbreak, family and friendship, and moments of loss and forgiveness.