What Wakes the Bells

Inspired by an ominous Prague legend, What Wakes the Bells is a lavish gothic fantasy by debut author Elle Tesch that is perfect for fans of Adalyn Grace, Margaret Rogerson, and V.E. Schwab.

Built by long-gone Saints, the city of Vaiwyn lives and breathes and bleeds. As a Keeper, Mina knows better than most what her care of Vaiwyn’s bells means for the sentient city. It’s the Strauss family’s thousand-year legacy--prevent the Vespers from ringing, or they will awake a slumbering evil.

One afternoon, to Mina’s horror, her bell peals thirteen times, shattering the city’s tenuous peace. With so much of the city’s history and lore lost in a long-ago disaster, no one knows the danger that has been unleashed--until the city begins to fight back. As the sun sets, stone gargoyles and bronze statues tear away from their buildings and plinths to hunt people through the streets. Trapped in Mina’s bell, the soul of a twisted and power-hungry Saint festered. Now free of his prison, he hides behind the face of one of Vaiwyn’s citizens, corrupting the city and turning it on itself.

As the death toll rises, the only chance Mina has to stop the destruction and horrific killings is finding and destroying the Saint’s host. Everyone is a suspect, including Mina’s closest loved ones. She will have to decide how far she’ll go to save her city--and who she’s willing to kill to do it.

Elle Tesch has lived just east of Vancouver, British Columbia her entire life. Surrounded by forests and mountains, it was inevitable that she would daydream about what might lurk in those trees. She twists places she loves and writes what she knows best: hungry monsters, casually cruel villains, and ace-spec girls in the stories they deserve. When not writing, Elle can be found reading whatever she can get her hands on, wrestling with her current cross-stitch project, or re-watching Pride & Prejudice (2005) for the 72nd time. What Wakes the Bells is her debut novel.