Description

The Curse of the Cole Women: A Novel

Hardcover – December 2, 2025
By Marielle Thompson

Atmospheric, haunting, and threaded with queer longing, The Curse of the Cole Women is a sweeping gothic novel about three generations bound to a brutal fate—and their fight to reclaim their own stories. Perfect for readers of Practical Magic, Spells for Forgetting, and those who crave magic steeped in saltwater, moonlight, and matrilineal power.

For centuries, the Cole women have lived alone on Juniper Island, tending its lighthouse and protecting the sailors who depend on its beacon. But the duty is also a sentence. Since their ancestor was accused of witchcraft and drowned by the townspeople, a curse has followed every Cole daughter: she will be born, she will love, and she will die by giving herself to the sea. As inevitable as the tide.

Ostracized by the mainland community and branded witches, the Coles endure in isolation—held there by a mixture of duty, guilt, and the chilling certainty that failing to light the beacon would doom others to drown. Their supposed “gift” becomes their prison.

Told across three interwoven timelines in the late twentieth century, the novel follows three Cole women as they struggle not only with the curse but with one another. Their stories explore mother-daughter fractures and fierce bonds, queer love blooming in hostile places, and the crushing weight of generational expectation. As each woman confronts the hypnotic pull of the ocean, the question becomes unavoidable: is the curse real, or is it a story designed to trap them? And if so, who created it—and who will break it?

Lush, evocative, and powerful, The Curse of the Cole Women is a tale of resisting misogyny, finding community, reclaiming magic, and choosing life even when fate insists otherwise.

Format: Hardcover