Some love stories are written in blood and petals
The Serpent & The saffron bride
When Priya Sharma arrives on the remote island of Vatu Vara, she expects nothing more than a temporary assignment: cataloging a rare collection of books housed within the crumbling estate known as Serpent’s Embrace. Instead, she finds a mansion steeped in silence.
The servants speak in careful half truths. Locked corridors whisper at night. Portraits seem to watch her as she passes. And beneath the house lingers the legend of the Saffron Bride, a woman whose tragic death still stains the island generations later.
Then Priya meets Nadeem Ashcroft. Magnetic, guarded, and unsettlingly familiar, he draws her deeper into the mysteries surrounding the estate. But as violent storms close in around the island, Priya begins to uncover fragments of a past that feels impossibly connected to her own.
Serpent’s Embrace is hiding something. Something ancient. Something grieving. Something that has been waiting for her.
But some doors are sealed for a reason. And some love stories refuse to remain buried.
The Serpent & The Saffron Bride is a lush gothic romance filled with haunting atmosphere, forbidden longing, ancestral secrets, and slow burning suspense. Perfect for readers who love cursed mansions, dark family legacies, and romances haunted by the past.
Available now in paperback.
the saffron bride trilogy
Three brides. One house. A curse that binds them all.
Book One: The Serpent and the Saffron Bride (Published)
ISBN: 978-1-966575-07-8
When Priya, a young librarian from Suva, travels to Vatu Vara to catalog a private collection, she enters a mansion steeped in whispers and shadows. Serpent’s Embrace is a place where the past lingers in every corridor, and where her path entwines with its enigmatic heir, Nadeem. Beneath the weight of ancestral secrets, Priya must decide whether the mansion has claimed her—or remembered her.
Book Two: The House of Ashcroft (Summer 2026)
ISBN: 978-1-966575-13-9
In the waning years of empire, a woman with no memory is found upon the shore of Vatu Vara. Named Maahi by Nadeem Ashcroft, she becomes both his salvation and his undoing. But the island is never silent, and the past refuses to rest. Haunted by voices not her own, Maahi is drawn into a tale of possession, jealousy, and forbidden love that reveals the true cost of being bound to the Ashcroft name.
Book Three: The Saffron Veil (Winter 2026)
ISBN: 978-1-966575-14-6
Before the curse, there was a bride. Anika, the first saffron bride, walked these halls with hope in her heart and vows on her lips. But love betrayed her, and what followed left a stain upon Serpent’s Embrace that no prayer could cleanse. Her story is one of devotion turned despair, of choices that birthed a legacy of sorrow. To know Anika is to know the beginning—and the inescapable end—of the house’s dark inheritance.