STRANGEBREW APOTHECARY

Legends & Lattes meets The Lost Apothecary in this debut adventure fantasy following a potion maker who must hide her true powers from her misfit co-workers, only to suffer the consequences of leading a double life.

When Ellastaria Strange joins a ragtag crew of con artists, she knows she’s walking on a perilous knife edge – because unlike her crooked co-workers, she's the real deal: an apothecary with supernatural abilities, hiding from a suspicious world.

When a swindle goes wrong and she accidentally reveals her true nature to some fanatics with no tolerance for the supernatural, she and her friends suddenly find themselves on the run from a hoard of obsessed vigilantes. Desperate and terrified, they find refuge with a beer brewer who wants nothing to do with crooks or occultists – and his starry-eyed sister who wants in on all of it.

For any hope of a future, the scrappy misfits must band together, embrace what makes them outcasts and trust in each other’s talents – no matter how strange …

Rustin Lovewell is trained in microbiology and immunology, and is the author of over a dozen biomedical research manuscripts. A life-long reader of epic fantasy, Rustin’s speculative fiction has appeared in Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores and the Volume 35 Writers of the Future anthology. He is a winner of the 2019 Writers of the Future contest and is a regular attendee of Balticon and the Superstars Writing Seminars. Rustin resides near Washington D.C. with his wife, two young daughters, and mini-dachshund affectionately known as Lady Little Legs.