Curiosity Quills is excited to reveal the
cover for
KASPER MÜTZENMACHER’S CURSED HAT, by Keith R. Fentonmiller,
and
announce that it’s now available for pre-order,
guaranteeing delivery to your
device on March 20, 2017.
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Curiosity Quills
Press
Date of Release: March 20, 2017
Description:
Kasper
Mützenmacher keeps a divine “wishing hat”—a thought-operated teleportation
device—locked in the wall safe of his Berlin hat shop. According to an old
prophecy, after Kasper’s Greek ancestor stole the wishing hat from Hermes, Fate
cursed his progeny to sell hats, on pain of mayhem or death. Kasper, however,
doesn’t mind making hats, and he loves Berlin’s cabaret scene even more. But
his carefree life of jazz and booze comes to a screeching halt when he must use
the wishing hat to rescue his flapper girlfriend Isana from the shadowy Klaus,
a veil-wearing Nazi who brainwashes his victims until they can’t see their own faces.
Isana
and Kasper’s happiness proves fleeting. Years after her mysterious death,
Kasper struggles as a lonely, single father of two until he meets Rosamund Lux,
recently released from a political prison where Klaus took her face. Kasper
soon suspects that Rosamund is no ordinary woman. According to the prophecy,
certain Lux women descend from the water nymph Daphne, who, during Olympian
times, transformed into a laurel tree to avoid Apollo’s sexual advances; they,
too, suffer from an intergenerational curse connected to Hermes’ stolen hat. As
Kasper falls deeper in love, Rosamund’s mental health deteriorates. She has
nightmares and delusions about Klaus, and warns that he will launch a night of
terror once he’s collected enough faces.
Kasper
dismisses the growing Nazi threat until the government reclassifies him as a
Jew in 1938. His plan to emigrate unravels when anti-Jewish riots erupt and the
Nazis start loading Jews on boxcars to Dachau. Then Rosamund goes missing, and
Klaus steals the wishing hat, the family’s only means of escape.
Kasper,
however, will face his most difficult battle in America. He must convince his
wayward son and indifferent grandson to break the curse that has trapped the
family in the hat business for sixteen centuries. Their lives will depend on
it.
Book
One of the Life Indigo series, Kasper Mützenmacher’s Cursed Hat is a
fantastical family saga about tradition, faith, and identity, set during the
Jazz Age, Nazi Germany, and the Detroit race riots of 1943. Comparable works
include: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Everything Is
Illuminated, and Underground Airlines.
Catherine
Bell, author of Rush of Shadows (winner of the Washington Writers’ Publishing
House 2014 Fiction Prize), calls the Cursed Hat “highly creative and
imaginative, brimming with invention, mythology, psychology, secrets,
characters, generations, cleverness and wisdom. Incredible, overwhelming,
compelling.
About The Author:
Keith is a consumer protection attorney for the Federal Trade
Commission in Washington, D.C. Before graduating from the University of
Michigan Law School, he toured with a professional comedy troupe, writing and
performing sketch comedy at colleges in the Mid-Atlantic States. His short
story, Non Compos Mentis, was recently published in The Stonecoast Review and
nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Another story, Exodus, will be published in
Running Wild Press’s forthcoming fiction anthology.
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