The world seems so clean if you only looked up.

I watch the ashes swim around like dandelion puffs, making swirls where bodies and walls once stood.

Ah, love. That’s what the world has lost. There’s no more love, only the illusion of it.

I used to have only one name; it used to mean something.

Forget who you are and what you think is there, and you'll discover things that don't exist to be known.

Words like 'unputdownable' and 'irresistible' are simply not enough for Cat Winters's In the Shadow of Blackbirds. Days after finishing this story, it remains the first thought I have in the morning, and the thing that haunts me until I sleep.

Before I can process what’s happening, Deirdre has opened her hands and Linden has taken the ring from her and slipped it onto my finger. “Rhine Ashby,” he says. “My wife.