• Blessed Water

    by Margot Douaihy
    Price $27.95
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    Blessed Water

Margot Douaihy at Harvard Book Store

presenting

Blessed Water:
A Sister Holiday Mystery

in conversation with KIRSTEN IMANI KASAI

Date

Mar
14
Thursday
March 14, 2024
7:00 PM ET

Location

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets

This event is free; no tickets are required.

Harvard Book Store welcomes MARGOT DOUAIHY—Assistant Professor in Popular Fiction Writing & Literature at Emerson College author of Scorched Grace: A Sister Holiday Mystery—for a discussion of her highly anticipated follow-up novel Blessed Water: A Sister Holiday Mystery. She will be joined in conversation by KIRSTEN IMANI KASAI—author of The House of Erzulie, Ice Song, and Tattoo.

About Blessed Water

Tattooed from her neck to her toes and sporting a gold tooth as sharp as her wisecracks, Sister Holiday struggles to stay on the righteous path. Never one to make things easy for herself, she’s committed to taking her permanent vows with the Sisters of the Sublime Blood and joining former fire inspector Magnolia Riveaux’s latest venture, Redemption Detective Agency—both in service of satisfying her eternal quest for answers.

When Sister Holiday and Riveaux set out to bust a philandering husband, they instead find the body of a priest floating in the swollen Mississippi River, and with it, Redemption’s next case. It’s significantly more gruesome than their orig­inal mission, but Sister Holiday feels called on by God to hunt down the murderer and keep her community safe.

As a torrential rainstorm drowns New Orleans for three harrowing days over Easter weekend, Sister Holiday and Riveaux follow the clues. With the stakes rising alongside the relentless floodwaters, our favorite punk nun-sleuth throws herself into the deep end yet again.

A lacerating and lyrical plunge into obsession, deception, and the questions that hold us captive, Blessed Water is a lights-out mystery that will leave you breathless.

Praise for Blessed Water

"Returning to New Orleans with my favorite punk-rock nun is such a thrill. Sister Holiday is the best kind of detective: unafraid of the darkest parts of human nature, and yet constantly seeking the best in others. Douaihy blends edgy counterculture with sincere faith, violence and nihilism with genuine yearning for human connection, and grit with hope, all in one hell of a mystery." —Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl

“Water weeps from the clouds, streaks the faces of the grieving, and revives a fragile faith. The writing in Blessed Water is utterly delightful. By the time the flood receded, and the case was solved, I’d already begun yearning for the next Sister Holiday Mystery.” —Cheryl A. Head, author of Time’s Undoing and the Anthony-nominated Charlie Mack Motown Mystery series

“Margot Douaihy follows up an extraordinary debut with an even more exceptional sophomore novel! She combines a poet’s soul and an artist’s eye with a powerful and strong authorial voice to create layered, complex characters involved in a story so well paced you cannot put it down. I am already hungry for her next book!” —Greg Herren, Lambda Award–winning author of Death Drop and the Scotty Bradley Mysteries

Masking Policy

Masks are encouraged but not required for this event.

Kirsten Imani Kasai
Kirsten Imani Kasai

Kirsten Imani Kasai

Kirsten Imani Kasai is the author of The House of Erzulie (Shade Mountain Press, 2018), Ice Song (Del Rey, 2009) and Tattoo (Del Rey, 2011). Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in Transition, Arts & Letters, Existere Journal of Arts & Literature, Drunk Monkeys, The Body Horror Book and The American Journal of Economics and Sociology. According to Foreword Reviews, “Kirsten makes the macabre beautiful.” She is an Assistant Professor of Popular Fiction at Emerson College. Find her online at www.KirstenImaniKasai.com.

Margot Douaihy
Margot Douaihy

Margot Douaihy

Margot Douaihy is a Lebanese American originally from Scranton, PA, now living in Northampton, MA. She received her PhD in creative writing from the University of Lancaster in the UK. She is the author of the novel Scorched Grace: A Sister Holiday Mystery and the poetry collections Bandit/Queen: The Runaway Story of Belle Starr, Scranton Lace, and Girls Like You. She is a founding member of the Creative Writing Studies Organization and an active member of Sisters in Crime and the Radius of Arab American Writers. A recipient of the Mass Cultural Council's Artist Fellowship, she was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, Aesthetica Magazine's Creative Writing Award, and the Ernest Hemingway Foundation's Hemingway Shorts. Her writing has been featured in Queer Life, Queer Love; Colorado Review; Diode Editions; The Florida Review; North American Review; PBS NewsHour; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Portland Review; Wisconsin Review; and elsewhere. Margot is an Assistant Professor in Popular Fiction Writing & Literature with Emerson College in Boston. As a coeditor of the Elements in Crime Narrative Series with Cambridge University Press, she strives to reshape crime writing scholarship, with a focus on the contemporary, the future, inclusivity, and decoloniality.

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