A writer of three registers
History, verse, and the young at the edge of the map.
The Gift Trilogy
Reading order
Book 1 · 1913 · St. Petersburg
A portrait commissioned by the Tsar slips into the hands of a woman who was never meant to hold it — and the empire begins to notice.
Where the series begins. In the last winter before the war, a young painter accepts a commission she cannot refuse and inherits a secret the court would kill to keep quiet. Read this one first: every gift that follows is measured against it.
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Book 2 · 1927 · Lower Manhattan
A dispossessed count carries a keepsake across the Atlantic, and a city built on reinvention decides what it is worth.
The direct sequel. Fourteen years on, the object from the first book surfaces in an immigrant quarter of New York, and the exile who guards it must choose between the past that made him and the country that will not have him as he is.
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Book 3 · 1938 · The Yucatán
In a ruin that has waited a thousand years, a guide leads a stranger to the answer the first two books were circling.
The closing volume. The thread running from St. Petersburg to New York arrives in the Yucatán, where a much older gift is waiting — and the question of who has the right to give anything away is finally asked outright.
Read a sampleA look inside
The Tsar's Gift — 1913
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Young Adult
Four standalone stories for younger readers. Each has its own page with a full synopsis, a chapter you can read on the spot, and a way to ask for the whole book.
A coming-of-age · Ages 13+
A girl on a remote island answers letters from a stranger who may not exist.
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A mystery · Ages 13+
Two orphans on a smuggling coast find a message sealed inside a storm-glass.
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A journey · Ages 12+
A boy inherits a half-finished map and the dangerous habit of finishing it.
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A friendship · Ages 12+
Two reluctant friends keep a promise every week, and the promise keeps changing.
Open the story pagePoetry
“We keep the map folded in the pocket of the year, / and open it only when the season turns to salt.”
from Letters to the Sea, a forthcoming collection
The opening of the trilogy, in full, right here on the page.
The Tsar's Gift
Chapter One — The Portrait
Reader letters