Spotlight: Descendants of the Big House by C. Vonzale Lewis
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(A Horde of Dead Poets)
Publication date: October 14th 2025
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Fantasy, Mystery
Synopsis:
Beatrice Monroe is still getting used to the knowledge that she was born a champion for Good and Evil. She spends her days combing through her great grandmother’s journals trying to find answers to what this newfound ability means for her as a member of law enforcement.
When a woman walks into her precinct claiming her aunt was murdered, Beatrice discovers a link between their families that may just have the answers she needs. But those answers are not easy to find. Because this mystery’s roots are buried in the past with five young girls and what they gave birth to…in The Big House.
Descendants of the Big House is a standalone installment in A Horde of Dead Poets collection featuring seven authors and their stories inspired by famous literary poems. If you often find yourself steering toward a dark, mysterious, isolated location; if family curses haunt you and unreliable narrators keep you in suspense, you won’t want to miss a single volume in this gripping collection.
Perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher, Simone St. James, Stephen King, and Shirley Jackson.
Excerpt
The Silverwood, Georgia police department had five detectives and twenty patrol officers for the twenty-seven thousand residents, most of whom were well into the senior years. We had our share of crime but most of it occurred during and after the tourist season.
On days like this, Chief Declouette had us going through what she’d dubbed as the ‘Fresh Eyes’ review. Old cases were brought out and exchanged between the five detectives to see if we could find any new leads. No one liked that sort of scrutiny of their work.
My partner Raphael and I were looking through an old hit and run. My quick read-through let me know we were never going to solve it. The driver wasn’t a local. The plates were stolen. And every drunken eyewitness statement read like a fever-dream, with varying degrees of lunacy intertwined. Rarely did we find witnesses who astutely observed what was going on around them. Which meant most statements were filled with fabrications and embellishments with only a kernel of truth thrown in. And it was our job to weed through all of it.
With a heavy sigh, I returned to my own search. And tried not to think about how it was also turning out to be pointless.
The next few pages were more of the same. It was as if Grandma Lucille’s mind was slowly deteriorating. Like she was screaming in her head and nobody was listening. One entry was dated the year before she died. All I remember from that time was the joy she had in my college acceptance. I pictured her on the day I left. Mouth stretched wide in a smile, while tears of joy streamed down her face. “You have somethin’ in you that will make you a great officer, my little Beatrice. Somethin’ great.”
Now her words held a deeper meaning. She had known what I was and would become one day. Police. Why didn’t she warn me? Why didn’t she tell me about all the horrific things she had done and the ways in which I might be forced to do the same?
But I wished she’d told us she was suffering.
I turned the page.
This was the end of everything. I read the date. A few weeks before she died, she had covered the page with a single message:
We are born in sin. We are born in sin. We are born in sin.
And the last line:
Just twisted souls upon the Tree of Life.
None of her previous journals had references to Christianity or any other religion, so why was she talking about sin?
I got up and went to the breakroom, needing a minute to think. The coffee was gone, and my throat was still dry. After retrieving a bottle of water from the refrigerator, I cracked the sealed cap, leaned against the counter and sipped—thoughts on that single line.
Just twisted souls upon the Tree of Life.
The first idea that came to mind was puppetry. Our souls like marionettes hung from branches, jerking and dancing until their strings tangled. Was that what Champions were? And what would that make the Tree of Life? The puppeteer, a great manipulator.
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About the Author
Carla Vonzale Lewis likes her martini’s shaken…never stirred. Though she was born in Georgia, please don’t mistake her for a Georgia peach. She’s more like a prickly pear. Speaking of being born, someone asked her recently if she remembered her birth, and all she had to say was, “Yes, I do remember that handsy doctor pulling me out into the cold. Right Bastard!!!”
Despite being born in the South, she grew up in the North. California to be exact. And every once in a great while, she gets to experience all four seasons. But mostly, it’s just heat.
Her debut novel, LINEAGE, was released July 16, 2019 and she fully intends to ride that joy for the rest of her life.
When she’s not concocting her next contemporary fantasy story, she enjoys reading, binge watching shows on Netflix, and trying to convince her husband that getting a dog is a wonderful idea.
Connect:
https://www.facebook.com/CVLauthor/
https://www.instagram.com/carlavlewis/
