Women, History, and Magic
7:00 PM • Friday, August 7, 2026Anderson's Bookshop - Naperville$24 Jillian Laine, Morgan Ryan, and Olesya Salnikova Gilmore Join Anderson’s Bookshop for an author event with Jillian Laine, Morgan Ryan, and Olesya Salnikova Gilmore , to celebrate the releases of Henry Tudor Must Die, A Resistance of Witches (paperback), and The Fortune Tellers of Rue Daru, on Friday, August 7th at 7:00 pm in our Naperville store. Event Format We will begin checking you in approximately 30 minutes before the start time. After a presentation and Q&A with the authors, the line will form in numbered order with the following guidelines: Posed photo with your camera taken by our staff There is a limit of 2 books from home to be signed (unless otherwise stated) There is a limit of 1 personalization (unless otherwise stated) All events have open seating. The “Order Line Number” on your pdf ticket is your reserved place in the signing line. You will line up to meet the authors based on that number. If you cannot attend, you must pick up your book (if included with ticket) at the hosting store within 30 days of the event. We can ship that book to you for an additional charge of $9.99; please call the store to arrange that. Pre-registration is required for this event because space is limited. More about Henry Tudor Must Die : One queen exiled. Another headed for the gallows. Both hungry for revenge. England’s most infamous queens unite in vengeance against Henry VIII. Anne Boleyn is going to die, and neither her cleverness nor her witchery can save her. So when her late rival, Catalina de Aragón, miraculously appears in her cell at the Tower of London on the eve of her execution, very much alive and offering a daring escape plan, no one is more surprised than Anne. Lina doesn’t have Anne’s magic—but she has just as much hate for England’s wretched king. Severed from her daughter and stripped of all her influence, Lina breathes only for the Hellebore Sisterhood, a clandestine and powerful society with a vested interest in keeping both queens alive . . . and using their particular skills to advance womankind. Anne and Lina’s old rivalries pale in comparison to a common enemy. And they're not alone. Anna von Kleve, Kat Howard, and even Catherine Parr all have their own bones to pick with the king. One by one, they capture their pawns, infiltrating the court and eliminating the men who plotted against them. Always inching closer to their true target . . . And they want his head. More about A Resistance of Witches (paperback) : RESISTANCE IS MAGIC “War II meets A Discovery of Witches …I raced through this one.” —Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Briar Club As World War II rages around her, a witch abandoned by her coven must journey to find a book of unspeakable power before it lands in Nazi hands Stubborn, plain-spoken and from an unimpressive family, Lydia Polk never expected to be accepted into the Royal Academy of Witches. Now, with Hitler’s army rampaging across Europe, the witches of Britain have joined the war effort, and Lydia is key to the cause: she must use her magic to track down magical relics before Hitler and his sycophants can. When a Nazi witch infiltrates the Academy with heart-breaking consequences, the coven is left shaken, exposed and divided. The elder British witches have no interest in further loss of coven life in service of a government that has forced them into hiding for decades, no matter the consequences to the world. But with the discovery of the Grimorium Bellum, an ancient book that leaves a trail of death and destruction wherever it goes, Lydia knows her mission has never been more urgent. Alone and woefully outnumbered, Lydia makes her way to the heart of occupied France, where she finds allies in Rebecca Gagne—a fierce French resistance fighter chockful of secrets—and Henry Boudreaux—a handsome Haitian-American art historian with a little magic of his own. Together, they traverse the country, stalked by the natural and supernatural alike, in search of the grimoire. But, as Lydia soon discovers, finding the book is only half the battle—the Grimorium Bellum has a dark agenda all its own. Lydia must subdue it before the Witches of the Third Reich can use it—but she’ll have to survive the book herself, first. More about The Fortune Tellers of Rue Daru : A fearless fortune teller in 1920s Paris must use her powers to divine who she can trust when an exiled Romanov princess and her brother come to her seeking answers about a decades-old mystery… Spirited Zina and her secretive grandmother, Baba Valya, own a tearoom on rue Daru in Paris, where they have lived quietly since Zina’s mother’s untimely death. By day, the women serve tea, mostly to members of the bustling Russian émigré community, but when dusk falls, they divine fortunes and perform séances for their loyal clientele. Then the charming Princess Olga and her brother arrive, searching for knowledge about the disappearance of their father, the exiled Grand Duke, cousin of the last Tsar of Russia. Zina, eager to learn more about the spirit world and her powers, performs the séance. She is able to summon the Grand Duke, but to her horror, he starts to haunt the shop, and he seems to know something sinister about her mother’s death. As Zina delves into her family’s hidden past, dark secrets are unearthed, threatening the home and tearoom Zina and her grandmother have worked so hard to build, not to mention their very lives. About the Authors: Jillian Laine is an author and journalist. She has written multiple children’s books and has worked as an acquisitions editor, book festival director, and literary award judge. She and her husband live with their pride of cats in the Great Lakes State. Henry Tudor Must Die is her first novel. Morgan Ryan is the author of stories born from a lifelong love of magic, a fixation on historical minutiae that borders on the obsessive, and a tendency to fall down rabbit-holes. She was raised in a family of writers in upstate New York, and received her degree in theatre performance from Northeastern University. She now lives in Chicago with her husband. A Resistance of Witches is her first novel. Olesya Salnikova Gilmore is the author of The Witch and the Tsar and The Haunting of Moscow House . Originally from Moscow, she was raised in the US and graduated from Pepperdine University with a BA in English/political science, and from Northwestern School of Law with a JD. She practiced litigation at a large law firm in Chicago for several years before pursuing her dream of becoming an author. She writes speculative gothic suspense and other dark fiction. She also loves exploring Eastern European history and folklore. Her work has appeared in LitHub, Tor.com, CrimeReads, Writer’s Digest, and Washington Independent Review of Books, among others. She lives in a wooded, lakeside suburb of Chicago with her husband and two daughters.
