Looking dizzily down, I suck in a breath of icy air. I wake barefoot, teetering on the cold tiles of a slate roof. I spring up out of my bed and grab for her, but she’s too lean and too quick. But the cat is carrying it away in her mouth, padding toward a partially ajar door. In the dream, my tongue is a wriggling red thing, mouse-size and wet. There’s no pain, only a sense of overwhelming, suffocating panic. It’s leaning over me, inhaling as if it’s trying to suck the breath from my lungs. I’M DREAMING OF A cat with bone white fur. To find the truth, Cassel will have to out-con the conmen.įor all the fictional cats I’ve killed in other books. As Cassel begins to suspect he’s an unwitting pawn in a huge con game, he must unravel his past, and his memories. He’s noticing other disturbing things, too, including the strange behavior of his two older brothers, who are keeping secrets from him. But his facade starts to crumble when he finds himself sleepwalking, propelled into the night by terrifying dreams about a white cat that wants to tell him something. He doesn’t have magic, so he’s an outsider, the straight kid in a crooked family-except for the small detail that he killed his best friend, Lila, three years ago.Ĭassel has carefully built up a facade of normalcy, blending into the crowd.

Many become mobsters and con artists, but not Cassel. And since curse work is illegal, they’re also all criminals. Starred review) is rife with the unexpected.From #1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Black comes the “dangerously, darkly gorgeous” (Cassandra Clare) Curse Workers trilogy, now together in one beautiful bind-up!Ĭassel Sharpe comes from a family of curse workers, people who have the power to change emotions, memories, and luck with the slightest touch of their hands. This 'beautifully realized dark fantasy.with prose that moves from stark simplicity to almost surreal intensity in a moment' ( He's going to create an even more elaborate trap and, with Lila's help, con a bunch of magic using conmen. In Cassel's search for answers about Lila and himself, he realizes that his brothers have been conning him for years, and that the final piece in their quest for power is about to fall into place. When Cassel begins to have strange dreams about a white cat and people around him are losing their memories, he starts to wonder what really happened to Lila, and what that means about his actions. On top of that, Cassel is plagued by guilt that he killed his best friend, Lila, years ago. The first installment in The Curse Workers series fromīestselling author Holly Black: 'Urban fantasy, con story-whatever you call it, read it' (Ĭassel comes from a family of con artists and grifters, all of them curse workers but him.

Holly black white cat series