Serpent and the Saffron Bride

A lush, atmospheric gothic romance set on a remote Fijian island, where a haunted mansion, a brooding heir, and a love that refuses to stay buried draw one woman into a past that remembers her.

Suva librarian Priya Sharma accepts what should be a straightforward professional assignment: catalog a private collection of books at Serpent's Embrace, the crumbling Ashcroft estate perched above a restless sea. Instead, she finds locked rooms, serpent carvings, forgotten diaries, and a portrait of a saffron-veiled bride that unsettles her in ways she cannot name.

Nadeem Khan, the estate's guarded heir, appears to know more than he is willing to reveal. Their attraction feels dangerous and impossible, yet every secret they uncover binds them tighter to a past that refuses to stay buried.

As the house awakens and the island's buried history tightens around her, Priya must uncover why she was brought to Serpent's Embrace and what the saffron-veiled bride has to do with her. But the closer she comes to the truth, the more the house seems determined to draw her into a story that ended in betrayal, loss, and death.

For readers who love haunted mansions, forbidden chemistry, family secrets, island gothic settings, and slow-burning gothic mystery.

The Serpent and the Saffron Bride is Book 1 in the Saffron Bride Trilogy, a slow-burn gothic romance steeped in Indo-Fijian heritage and colonial-era secrets, for readers of Rebecca, Mexican Gothic, and The Hacienda.