Moonflower scoops “traumantasy” debut Snow or Ashes from bookseller Lucy Fisher

Moonflower are delighted to announce the acquisition of Snow or Ashes, the debut fantasy novel from London bookseller Lucy Fisher which will publish in hardback, eBook, and audiobook in February 2028.

UK and Commonwealth rights were acquired by Moonflower Publisher Christi Daugherty from James Spackman at The bks Agency with Tory Lyne-Pirkis handling PR.

Snow or Ashes will be our lead SFF title for 2028 and follows the huge success of Moonflower title Pagans by James Alistair Henry which was SFF Waterstones Book of the Month and a Times Bestseller in 2026.

More “traumantsy” than romantasy, Snow Or Ashes is set in both contemporary Britain and the parallel realm of Aventyr. The story involves grief, love, memory, addiction, and the struggle for power. As the lives of three women converge across worlds that are more closely linked than may first appear, Snow or Ashes explores the costs of vengeance, and the lies people tell themselves to survive.

About Snow or Ashes

Jane wants to be left alone with her pills. She wants to divorce Ben, but an accident left him in a coma and she needs him to be awake enough for the divorce to really hurt. Jane wants people to stop trying to help her or asking her for help. But they keep helping and they keep asking.

Linnet wants to know where she is and why. She wants to feel less alone and lost. But she’s been told that everything in this unfamiliar world has rules, and a price, even answers. She can’t ask Winter, because he’s just a good-looking idiot. She can’t ask Finn, because he’s just doing his job. The fox seems strange enough to know, but it can’t talk.

Queen Maeve wants her husband dead, and her lost child returned. She has rid herself of love and remorse and need in order to achieve these things, and Jane is an important piece in her game, as are Linnet and her companions. It should be an easy win, but humans are unpredictable and her debt to Hell grows bigger every day.

Snow or Ashes follows a traumatised woman as she figures out who she is, and why the world is so hard for her to navigate. Until she discovers that the only thing that can truly save her is caring more about someone else than she cares for herself. 

About Lucy Fisher

Currently working at Wimbledon Bookshop in South West London, Lucy Fisher has been a bookseller for twenty-six years and has a lifelong passion for reading. Lucy lives in West London with her husband, David, and an excessive and ever-growing collection of books. Snow or Ashes is her debut novel.

“Snow or Ashes is one of those books that continually surprises you. It's not at all what it appears to be on the surface, and each turn of the page brings something unexpected. When everyone at Moonflower first read it, we couldn't stop talking about it. I am delighted to be the one who gets to publish it, and I can't wait for everyone to discover Jane, and go with her on her brilliant journey.”

— Christi Daugherty, Moonflower Publisher

“A life of obsessive reading and a career in bookshops means I have read, and loved, and enthused about, and sold, so many amazing novels that it seemed rude to even try to write one. Then I had a lot of very unserious ideas about serious things during lockdown (it’s always lockdown, isn’t it?) and they somehow jigsawed themselves into a story. I think I just wrote the novel I wanted to be reading at that point. Moonflower is the club I always wanted to be part of. I’m still not sure how I got here, but I’m so glad I did.””

— James Alistair Henry, author

“For actual decades now, Lucy Fisher has been the most entertaining bookseller to be at a launch party with and the book trade’s best social media follow. Turns out she was also, secretly, an astonishingly gifted novelist all this time. I am beyond excited for the world to discover her talent and I can think of no one better than the supremely committed and talented Moonflower team to launch her debut.”

— James Spackman, the bks Agency

We are so excited to be bringing the second instalment of this Times Top Ten bestselling series to the world.