Shameen Abubakar
Shameen Abubakar is a New Jersey native who spent the summers of her childhood in Karachi and now lives in Los Angeles. She works in Marketing at Walt Disney Studios, reading scripts when she’s not reading books, drinking chai and wistfully looking out train windows (or pretending to while stuck in traffic on the 405 because she’s perpetually mourning the lack of trains in LA). She grew up getting overly attached to side characters that received little to no screentime or died in the third act. She now writes about friendship in all forms, places that could be people, magic – the obvious and not – and side characters who’ve inadvertently found themselves on the mainstage. THE ECHO OF EMPIRES is her debut novel.
THE ECHO OF EMPIRES
Three former street rats are unwillingly bound to a family of legendary beasts who have just been released from a thousand year banishment. To break the dangerous bond, the trio and their monstrous counterparts must crash a Royal Wedding to steal the only object that could free them from one another - accidentally unraveling an empire while they’re at it.
Soha Khosrani knows how to make a deal.
Born and bred in Joot—a crowded port city teeming with gang lords, bureaucrats, and heiresses—Soha is an upstart tailor with an unhealthy appetite for risk who falls somewhere in between all of the above. On the cusp of the biggest deal in her career, Rostam, a fiery beast of legend, destroys Soha’s precious tailor shop. Awoken from a thousand-year banishment arranged by his siblings, Rostam has returned furious, vengeful, and bound to Soha through a ring she discovered in her childhood.
If that isn’t enough, Soha’s past then crashes onto her doorstep when her childhood nemesis and her assassin sister both return to Joot, bound to Rostam’s brother and sister. In order to break the dangerous bonds, the three former street rats and their monstrous counterparts must crash the royal wedding and steal the only object that might free them from one another. On their way, they confront the past that ties them all together, while also uncovering a history that could unravel an empire of carefully woven secrets.
All Soha knows is that being tied to a monster is not good for business, so she will do whatever it takes to return to her life of sin and sequins. Even if that means offering up an entire empire as collateral.
Publication
US: Simon & Schuster (Margaret McElderry)
Release date: 16 February 2027
