Adult contemporary fantasy · J. M. Sandour
Two sisters. A world where magic is ordinary. And the extraordinary challenge of learning to be family again.
Two adult sisters learn to share their childhood home again in a small Appalachian town where magic is ordinary, privacy is scarce, and helping your sister is considerably harder than casting a spell.
Meet the sisters
01 / At the heart of the story
Emily Huskey
Emily Huskey built her life around a demanding career dealing with dangerous magical creatures. Losing that career brings her home with boxes of books, formidable expertise, and memories she isn’t ready to discuss.
Madison Huskey
Madison runs a landscaping business and menagerie, knows her town, and has every intention of helping her sister settle in. Knowing when to stop helping is another matter.
They love each other. Living together will take practice.
02 / Find your kind of magic
Sisters first. Magic everywhere. A town that notices everything.
The sister energy of Sisters (2015)
Emily and Madison’s affection comes with old habits, sharp banter, and different ideas about what helping should look like.
The magical infrastructure of The Magicians
Magic runs appliances, shapes education and employment, and comes with regulations, expenses, and inconvenient complications.
The homecoming appeal of A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeepingby Sangu Mandanna
After losing the career that defined her, Emily finds a different future through shared meals, practical support, and difficult conversations.
Expect a family-centered story with humor, emotional recovery, and a local magical-creature mystery.
03 / Meanwhile, in West Oak
West Oak, Tennessee Magic is everyone’s business.
Emily came home to recover. Madison planned to help. Neither planned on an invisible, sand-producing creature turning the town into a landscaping emergency.
Catching it will take Emily’s professional knowledge, Madison’s practical ingenuity, and cooperation from a town whose favorite spectator sport might be other people’s business.
Imagining the world
An early visual exploration for The Huskey Sisters.
04 / Before you turn the page
I describe The Huskey Sisters as adult contemporary fantasy with cozy elements. Anxiety, painful memories, and sibling conflict are part of the journey, but the book brings those emotional difficulties to a comfortable, reassuring resolution.
Readers draw the boundaries of cozy fantasy differently. Whether it feels cozy to you depends on how much difficult emotion you’re comfortable encountering along the way.
Romantic possibilities are part of the sisters’ lives, but their relationship with each other drives this book. Family, friendship and community provide its central emotional rewards.
Magic is an ordinary, public part of this version of contemporary life. People use it at home, at work and around town, and encounter its costs, rules and unequal opportunities.
Yes. The central characters are adult sisters navigating careers, independence, family support and the lives they have built apart.