The Mermaid of Warsaw

The Little Mermaid meets Where the Dark Stands Still in a sweeping WWII historical fantasy, merging the real history of the Warsaw Uprising with Polish folklore. First edition will feature gorgeously designed case art, patterned endpapers, and an illustrated interior map! August 1944. Unable to fight the German occupation of Warsaw in her current form, a mermaid living in the Vistula River bargains with Baba Jaga for a pair of legs. But the witch’s magic comes with a price. If the mermaid fails to liberate Warsaw, she will return to what she was: ashes on the river she was born in. What the mermaid doesn’t remember is that before the Vistula, she was a girl, Basha Rosenfeld, and her childhood friend Shimon Steinberg—who she saved from a train bound for the Treblinka extermination camp—is surviving in Warsaw under falsified papers. As the mermaid exacts vengeance on the Nazis, Shimon lives undercover. But their paths collide when the mermaid hunts a monstrous corvid, the Valravn, masquerading as SS officer Bruno Falkenwrath, to Shimon’s apartment, and Shimon recognizes his lost childhood friend. Now on the run from the Valravn, Shimon and Basha join forces with Polish resistance as they’re preparing to launch an uprising against the Germans. But as the city is consumed in violence and help promised by the Allies doesn’t arrive, Shimon realizes that the uprising may be doomed to fail—and that he, Basha, and Falkenwrath have a much more sinister connection than he ever imagined. A connection that will take him to the ruins of Treblinka and force him to confront the horror of what happened there. A gut-wrenching and ultimately empowering tale of resistance and the magic of storytelling. Award-winning author R.M. Romero’s timely and necessary story rises to meet the present moment where history often feels on the precipice of repeating itself.