Instead of trying to find your perfect match in a dating app, we bring you the “Author-Reader Match" where we introduce you to authors you may fall in love with. It's our great pleasure to present Olesya Salnikova Gilmore!
Writes:
Speculative gothic suspense and other dark fiction where magic and reality intersect, and that have: lush and swoon-worthy atmospheric settings in a different time and place, flawed female characters with major family issues but who still somehow manage to tug at your heartstrings, a mystery at the root of everything, romance as a subplot and not the whole thing, and all the gothic feels, with a dash of whimsy and a splash of blood here and there, of course!
The newest book, THE FORTUNE TELLERS OF RUE DARU, is set in Jazz-Age Paris and follows a spunky young fortune teller named Zina, who 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-long mystery at the heart of the tearoom she owns with her grandmother . . . before she summons a vengeful spirit who knows something sinister about her mother’s untimely death and dark secrets from their family’s past are unearthed, threatening the home and tearoom they have worked so hard to build, not to mention their very lives.
About:
Gothic girl at heart/Chicago suburbs wife & mama everywhere else. Immigrant with a headache from teaching her two little daughters not one but two languages. Escaped the law to write books. Also escaped from journalism and grant writing. Loves anything dark (if asks for comedy, really means thriller or horror, the darker the better), all the audiobooks (not only historical fiction/horror/fantasy, but mystery & thriller, the juicer the better), traveling the world, playing with Barbies and girl super hero action dolls and doing art projects with the girlies, taking long walks with the husband and talking story ideas, any art museum anywhere, theatre and opera and musicals – oh my, historical movies and shows anytime, every time. Stories about women. Only and always. Classic gothics are first literary love, Phillippa Gregroy the second, and last but certainly not least Practical Magic, and not just at Halloween.
I’m looking for readers who need:
• Spunky lady leads
• Magic, fortune-telling, and/or witchy vibes
• Ghosts that are more eerie than horrifying
• All the séances and spiritualist happenings
• Lush & swoon-worthy atmospheric settings
• Women business owners & female survival stories
• Complex family dynamics & secrets
• Immigrant/émigré inspo
• Granddaughter/grandma love
• LOVE!/Romance!/Tension between lovers!/Kind of enemies to lovers!
• Police/detective love interests
• Historical fiction and thriller & mystery elements
• Murder & mayhem
• Multiple POV & timelines
• Book club horror/ “horror light” fiction
• More books by authors like Katherine Arden, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Isabel Canas, Alix E. Harrow, and Simone St. James
• PARIS!!
• Jazz-Age, 1920s vibes for dayssss
• Midnight in Paris & Emily in Paris (especially that Belle Époque Ball!)
What to expect if we're compatible:
• To be teleported to a new time and place
• To experience the full spectrum of emotions
• To follow the lives of women, for better or worse, and to experience different POVs, tenses, and times
• To not be so much horrified as on edge
• To have magic, ghosts, a dark mystery, some history, and gothic vibes, all wrapped up in one book
• To have murder in the story and a body count my editor is worried about
• To have some kind of family drama (followed by love, so much love!)
• To have romance, anything from sweet to spicy, angry to melt-your heart, enemies to lovers, childhood friends to lovers to just plain old recent loves or lusts
• To be subjected to a wry sense of humor
• To look for cultural & historical references - be it from books, films, songs, gods/goddesses, fairy tales/folklore, historical events/people, really, anything!
• To learn something new
• To experience a truly bittersweet ending
A fearless fortune teller in 1920s Paris must use her powers to divine who she can trust—and even more importantly, learn to trust herself—in the searing new gothic novel from the author of The Haunting of Moscow House.
Spirited twenty-something 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 answers about the disappearance of their father, the Grand Duke and cousin to the murdered 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 Zina and her grandmother’s found family, home, and tearoom, not to mention their very lives.
Horror | Fiction Classics | Suspense Gothic [ Berkley, On Sale: March 24, 2026, Hardcover / e-Book / audiobook, ISBN: 9780593952689 / eISBN: 9780593952702 ]
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.
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