Lexi Smith McNicholas
Lexi Smith McNicholas has loved writing ever since elementary school, when she filled four journals with Star Wars fan fiction. Now, she crafts adventurous, spooky stories inspired by history. Her work is influenced by the beautiful chaos of nature, as well as her bisexual identity. She has a passion for writing stories about queer girls who become their own heroes. She loves cryptids (especially sapphic ones), being outside (especially in the desert), playing Dungeons & Dragons (especially light clerics), and eating snacks (especially cheese). She lives in Southern California with her husband and her dog. Both of them sweetly tolerate her talking endlessly about books.
Oh So Many Teeth
Sapphic werewolf cowgirls learn to embrace their inner monsters while hunting for cursed treasure in the wild west.
A bloodthirsty monster lurks beneath Ingrid Connor’s skin. Vicious werewolves like her deserve death at the hands of the wolf hunters seeking to eliminate them, but luckily for Ingrid, she’s got Aunt Cora. At their isolated desert home in 1892 Arizona, Aunt Cora keeps Ingrid safe from the hunters, and humanity safe from Ingrid.
Ingrid’s tiny world shatters when bounty hunter and treasure-seeker Alice stumbles across her homestead. A fellow werewolf who’s mastered the beast within, Alice believes Ingrid to be unfairly imprisoned, and kidnaps her with the intention of teaching her to tame her killer instincts. Longing to explore the world she’s never seen, yet terrified she’ll always be a danger to humanity, Ingrid convinces Alice to take her home. They arrive to find an empty, wrecked house, and a pool of blood in Cora’s bed.
The girls strike a tentative deal: world-wise Alice will help Ingrid track down her missing aunt. In exchange, Ingrid will use her particularly keen sense of smell to help Alice seek a legendary lost gold mine with enough wealth to provide for the hidden community of werewolves she considers family—never mind that most who’ve looked for the mine have wound up dead or missing.
Alice and Ingrid begin to fall for one another, but the more they dig for answers, the more a connection forms between Cora’s disappearance, the mine’s violent history, and Ingrid’s lack of memories about life before her isolation. To survive and save the girl she’s grown to love, Ingrid will have to uncover—and embrace—what it truly means to be monstrous.
Publication
NA/world rights: Bloomsbury Childrens
Release date: 1 June 2027
