The New Paris by J. McGuire Mohr introduces readers to a strangely sympathetic heroine in Madeleine Houllette. “Maddy” hides a dark secret that forces her escape across the Atlantic to a new life in Paris. This debut novel is the first book in a startling series featuring intricate plot twists that take place over generations of Houllette women in exotic lands.

After witnessing the murder of her mother, Echo, a Creole beauty from the Louisiana bayou, seven-year-old Madeleine Houllette is forced to flee the only home she has ever known. Hungry and surviving in New York’s Lower East Side, “Maddy” snatches the purse of a stranger, Sophie Schulman. This simple act of desperation catapults both women into an unlikely friendship, even as a stalker with evil intensions, Armand Bouchette, Madeleine’s unhinged father, threatens to affect the curse of the Houllettes. As Madeleine tries to outrun the chilling power of his dark obsessive love, lurking out of sight, fate intervenes to force Armand, Madeleine, and Sophie into a ferocious heart-breaking reckoning.