In a world where death is no obstacle to marriage, debutante season has never been so ghastly.

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Miss Cecily Harrow has always detested the suffocating rules of high society—the endless teas, the whispered scandals, the relentless pressure to marry. But nothing rankles more than how no one dares speak of the dead… even when they’re waltzing across the ballroom.

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The undead have become an accepted—if unsettling—presence in drawing rooms and garden parties alike. Some consider it romantic, even advantageous, to wed a suitor who will never age (or breathe). Meanwhile, young ladies must be practically perfect, prim, and docile to attract a suitor. Cecily considers the hypocrisy revolting. Unfortunately, half her admirers have been six feet under for decades, and her mother insists she smile sweetly through the stench of embalming oils.

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But when reanimated gentlemen start turning up truly dead—dismembered and left for the crows—Cecily becomes the prime suspect. Soon, women begin approaching her in secret, longing to join a society she never intended to create: a sisterhood devoted to freedom from both living and undead patriarchy. What begins as a whispered alliance in the moonlit woods becomes something far more dangerous.

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Accused of witchcraft, pursued by gossip, and stalked by something far darker than polite society’s secrets, Cecily must unmask a killer before the season ends—or risk joining her suitors in the grave.

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Darkly witty and deliciously macabre, Withered Blooms is a Gothic tale of romance, rebellion, and the rot beneath the roses.