The Shabti

Can you flimflam a ghost?

It's 1934. Former medium Dashiel Quicke travels the country debunking spiritualism and false mediums while struggling to stay ahead of his ex-business partner and lover who wants him back at any cost. During a demonstration at a college campus, Dashiel meets Hermann Goschalk, an Egyptologist who's convinced that he has a genuine haunted artifact on his hands. Certain there is a rational explanation for whatever is going on with Hermann's relics, Dashiel would rather skip town, but soon finds himself falling for Hermann. He agrees to take a look after all and learns that something is haunting Hermann's office indeed.

Faced with a real ghost Dashiel is terrified, but when the haunting takes a dangerous turn, he must use the tools of the shady trade he left behind to communicate with this otherworldly spirit before his past closes in.

For readers who enjoy A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske, The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune, and Malice by Heather Walter

Megaera C. Lorenz was born in Little Rock, AR in 1984, but spent most of her childhood on Guam. The daughter of a geologist and a mathematician, Megaera broke from the family's STEM tradition when she became obsessed with ancient Egypt as a child. She enrolled in college at the University of Guam at age 13 and eventually earned a Ph.D. in Egyptology from the University of Chicago. Over the years she has worked as a museum educator, an instructor of undergraduate and graduate-level Egyptology courses, a field archaeologist, and a professional tech writer and editor.

She has also been writing fiction and creating art for the sheer joy of it since early childhood. In addition to her love of Egyptology, Megaera is fascinated with early 20th-century American history and culture. She's also a connoisseur of the strange and uncanny and is particularly interested in the history of the Spiritualist movement in America. These combined interests sparked the inspiration for her debut novel, The Shabti.

Megaera has lived in the Chicagoland area for nearly 20 years. She currently resides in St. Charles, IL. When she isn't writing, she enjoys spending time with her family, experimenting with digital art, studying Yiddish, and coming up with increasingly bizarre and arcane in-jokes with her friends.