Exclusive Cover Reveal + Excerpt: Fantasy Author Sara Hashem’s YA Debut Where No Shadow Stays

It’s been a big year for popular YA authors who are making the leap to the world of adult fiction. From Stephanie Garber (Alchemy of Secrets) to Bridget Kemmerer (Warrior Princess Assassin) and Marie Lu (Red City), we often hear about young adult heavy hitters trying their hand at wooing an older audience. But there’s often much less news about adult authors who go the other way, and take a shot at writing for the YA crowd. But next year, Sara Hashem, fantasy author of the excellent Scorched Throne duology (The Jasad Heir + The Jasad Crown), is doing something very different: Her YA debut, Where No Shadow Stays, will hit shelves, and it’s something of a swerve from her previous fantasy storytelling into the dark world of supernatural horror.

Described as perfect for fans of books like She Is Haunting and White Smoke, the story follows Mina, an Egyptian-American teen fighting to survive after running afoul of a curse during a visit to her late mother’s childhood home in El Agamy. The curse, which violently possesses anyone she gets close to and causes them to try to kill her, devastates her life, forcing her to abandon her friends, her father, and everything she cares about. A story of generational trauma, complicated family relationships, and an unexpected enemies-to-lovers romance with a bad boy classmate who may be the only person who can help Mina free herself, Where No Shadow Stays represents something altogether new for Hashem as a writer.

Here’s how the publisher describes the story.

Seventeen-year-old Mina is always focused on what comes next: exams, school dances, opportunities for a picnic by the lake. Filling up the future keeps her from lingering over how little she knows about her history or where she comes from. Anytime she asks her father questions about Egypt–or about her mother’s mysterious death–he struggles to open up.

When Mina receives an invitation from an aunt she’s never met to visit the Haikal mansion, her mother’s childhood home in El Agamy, Mina accepts. She can’t resist the chance to learn more about her roots or what happened to her mother, even if it means lying to her loves ones for the first time in her life.

But when Mina returns from El Agamy, she doesn’t come back alone.

A sinister entity follows Mina from the Haikal mansion to her tiny California town. Mina is forced to abandon her friends, her father, and everything she loves in order to prevent the entity from violently possessing them. Isolated and fighting for her life, Mina must seek help from an unlikely ally: Jesse Talbot, the mortician’s hostile son and the only person who proves immune to possession. Jesse would rather floss with barbed wire than team up with social butterfly Mina, but he doesn’t exactly have a choice—after all, he’s running from family secrets of his own.

As Mina and Jesse dig deeper into Mina’s family lore, they uncover a bloody debt that must be satisfied if Mina wants to finish senior year alive.

Where No Shadow Stays won’t hit shelves until March 2026, but we’ve got an exclusive first look at its haunting cover—-and a sneak peek at the first chapter of the story itself! 

Chapter One

Present Day

No one has tried to kill me yet today.

I add a tally in my journal. If I can go another seven hours, it’ll officially be three days since the last attack.

My pen hovers over the page. I cross out attack. What do you call a gas station attendant who douses you in gasoline and raises a lighter?

Luck alone kept me from becoming Mina flambé. The attendant had already emptied his lighter before the thing possessed him. It never produced a spark. I managed to get in my car and screech out of the parking lot before the orange-eyed man could find another way to burn me alive.

It’s getting creative. Too creative.

People stream around my tree, their backpacks slung over their shoulders and laughter ringing in the quad. It’s a beautiful day in a town where beautiful days are one in a hundred. Sunshine promises a weekend of bonfires by Lake Lasem, and the prospect of spending time outdoors has put everyone in a good mood.

Lake Lasem. If I close my eyes, I can hear shrieks as someone squeezes the twelve-dollar bottle of charcoal lighter fluid—likely sold out by now at the general store—and accidentally sends the fire roaring to twice its size. I can smell bits of paper and wood burning. Feel the warmth against my toes. Taste the gooey, half-charred marshmallow melting on my tongue.

I exhale, tracing the edge of the journal.

The problem is that I can’t close my eyes. I can’t lose myself to imagination, because although no one has tried to kill me yet today, it’s only noon.

A gaggle of freshmen emerges from the admin hall. I recognize one of the girls from the dance team. Yesenia. I approved her membership to the team myself. Someone nudges Yesenia, and she glances over. I lift my hand in a wave.

She gives me a cool once-over and keeps walking.

Right. I lower my arm, swallowing my sigh. To avoid drowning in my own self-pity, I’ve devised a couple of non-negotiable rules. One of them includes not sighing more than four times a day. I’ve already used up three. I need to save number four for a special occasion, and Yesenia brushing me off isn’t special. In fact, it is exactly what I expected. I should count myself lucky she didn’t hurl her backpack at my head.

Three weeks ago, a beautiful morning like this would have sent me on a picnic-planning craze. I would have been sprinting to the general store to beg for the last bottle of lighter fluid the second the bell rang. With my Polaroid in hand, I’d cajole my friends into taking at least fifteen photos by the lake in increasingly ridiculous poses. Despite the crowd, we would claim the best spot, right under the big maple tree, because Rainie would cut one path with her glare and Alex another with his smile. Charcuterie boards, little baskets of grapes, glass bottles of juice with condensation running down the sides . . . yeah. It would have been a great day.

Across the quad, my friends sneak glances over at me from our—their—table. Rainie catches me staring and flips me off. Lucia looks sad, and Aida squints like she’s not sure where she’s seen me before.

Alex is the only one who keeps his gaze averted. My heart aches, and Sigh #4 nearly breaks free. Breaking up with my boyfriend of three years was bad enough, but not even being able to explain why?

I’d learned the hard way that guilt, if given something to latch onto, can chew you to the bone.

I try to force my mind away from Alex and my friends. It won’t do any good—I’ve already worn the tracks thin running around the same mental circles.

For now, it has to be this way.

A platoon of ants march in the grass, lining up to lay siege to my untouched mayo and egg sandwich.

“Lay down your arms, soldiers.” I break off a piece of the pita and place it near the ant army. Someone should get to enjoy my meal, since I won’t.

I’m startled from my silent conversation with the lead ant when shouts erupt by the theater building. Two of the theater kids wrestle on the stairs, cursing and crying as the others try to break them apart. The lunch monitors ignore them. Unless someone draws blood, those squabbles are usually a marketing maneuver to get us intrigued enough to buy tickets to their plays. Antigone this time, I think, continuing from Oedipus last week. I only know that because Miss Diaz offered ten points of extra credit to anyone who went, so I chose the busiest time and watched it from a seat in the back row, wedged between a couple enthusiastically making out and a guy who fell asleep in the first fifteen minutes.

One of the drama kids is flailing his arm around like a snake getting electrocuted, and he clocks the other guy across the jaw. Indignation breaks out on the injured guy’s face, and the fight takes a turn for the ugly. Uh-oh. The monitors remain occupied with a red-eyed, giggling freshman.

Me and the ants are watching with concern—one of them has the other in a headlock—when a figure materializes between the brawling duo. A figure with broad shoulders encased in a leather jacket a size too big, a lean, corded frame covered in a T-shirt with the name of a band nobody recognizes, and a pair of black work boots with the flap turned out.

Jesse Talbot grabs the back of the drama kids’ shirts and yanks them apart.

The school’s resident loner looms over the boys with his patented doomsday scowl. He says something I can’t make out, and the theater guys go still. They probably hadn’t expected to actually get beaten up, and with Jesse, it is a much higher possibility. After a minute, he releases them, returning to his table at the edge of the quad. The theater group elbows each other, and I can’t help but share their surprise.

Jesse Talbot is notorious for keeping to himself. Aggressively solitary doesn’t even begin to cover it. He hangs in the shadows of every room he walks into, like each moment is a new debate about whether it’s worth stepping into the light. Dark crescents curve under eyes blacker than an eclipse, framed beneath wavy black hair a few inches past his ears. An undeniably attractive guy. Not that it matters—most girls brave enough to venture his way run straight into the barbed wire of his hostility.           

Eventually, the theater kids retreat to their building. Jesse’s stiff shoulders loosen.

Ah. “They got too close to his table.” I share my revelation with the ants, only remembering I’m audible to more than just my army when a teacher glances over.

Her proximity startles me. Way too close. Killing close.

Dropping the last of my lunch for the ants, I hoist my backpack over my shoulder and follow a large group of lacrosse players into the building.

I have tallies to maintain.

*

Backpacks smack into my shoulders as I trudge down the hall, eyes trained on my shoes. After class, I’ll go home and spend another afternoon hunting through Baba’s office library for books about possession or missing memory. The answer is out there—I know it is.

I have to believe I’m getting closer to finding a solution and not just slowly running out of options.

Mr. Clay, deep in conversation with another teacher, shoots me a saccharine smile as he passes. I don’t return it.

Not all my teachers have given up trying to coax me back into my Before self, but Mr. Clay never tried to begin with. As to be expected from Canyon High’s most despicable history teacher. Mr. Clay disliked me the moment he saw my name on the class roster freshman year. Yasmina “Mina” Mansour. Arab. Egyptian, to be exact.

Trying to win him over was my singular goal in AP Euro. I practically memorized the Bolshevik and French Revolutions to impress him, but he couldn’t have cared less. It took too long for me to understand that no grade would ever be high enough. Participation credits, haunting his office hours—none of it mattered. His opinion of me had nothing to do with me, and he’d formed it before he even looked up from that roster.

Now, his detachment is a blessing. Mr. Clay pretends to tolerate me, and I happily return the favor. It means I don’t have to worry about another well-intentioned lecture on “how things are at home” or why I left in December a relatively well-adjusted girl and returned a recluse.

Perfume and sweat cling together in the air. Too focused on not flat-tiring the girl ahead of me, I bump into another student. “Sorry,” I mumble, raising my head with an apologetic grimace.

A flash of leather and dark eyes confront me.

“I’ll live,” Jesse Talbot says. He gives me a passing nod before striding away, maneuvering through the crowd with ease. I stare at his back for a long beat. The impulse to follow him comes out of nowhere, momentarily clearing the lethargic haze that’s hung over me for weeks.

If anyone can teach me how to be alone, it’s Jesse Talbot.

Excerpt courtesy of Holiday House Publishing, Inc.

Where No Shadow Stays will be released on March 21, 2026, but you can preorder it now. 

Lacy Baugher Milas writes about Books and TV at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter and Bluesky at @LacyMB