Seamier Side of Magic

Los Angeles in 1980 is a magical place for fashion and style. Frances Blivens, known to her friends as Frak, dreams of opening her own shop and launching a line of unisex office wear. In the meantime, she works for Pamela Van Plotz as a design assistant, sweeping up pins, helping her coworkers unionize, and serving the clients who aren't quite human.The Wild Seals hired Van Plotz Design Studio to make bolero jackets for their concert. Frak is a huge fan. However, after the show, someone poisoned the Seals and stole the new jackets, as well as the Seals' selkie coats, which give them the power to shift from human to seal and back again. Frak agrees to help. Before she knows it, she is involved in a dangerous search for clues that takes her into a world of supernatural creatures, some of whom would rather eat humans than help them. Carol M. Booton writes cozy fantasies on a coziness spectrum, from comfy-cozy humorous magical mysteries involving silliness, fashion, and the search for life's meaning and purpose to darkly humorous and somewhat disturbing tales of magical creatures lost in the human world.

After losing her job at Van Plotz Design Studio, Frak launches her own custom clothing design shop. Being in business is hard. Her roommate and best friend, Molly, encourages her to enroll in a marketing class. Stan, a fellow student, tells Frak she can get free publicity if she volunteers to teach middle-schoolers how to sew. Meanwhile, Corinne Atwilder, the most famous costume designer in Los Angeles, asks Frak to find her missing stylebook. Without her sense of style, Corinne is washed up in Hollywood. As Frak searches for the stylebook, she discovers many of the L.A. stylists she's known for years are actually style witches, part of the Swanky Shamans coven. One of them may be the thief! Not only that, the stylists are at war with the local librarians! As Frak learns the origins of the rift, she begins to suspect who might have taken the stylebook and why. However, to get it back, she must confront her own emerging magical nature, and the outcome could be deadly. Carol M. Booton writes cozy fantasies on a coziness spectrum, from comfy-cozy humorous magical mysteries involving silliness, fashion, and the search for life's meaning and purpose to darkly humorous and somewhat disturbing tales of magical creatures lost in the human world.