Smoke and Dagger

Catherine Littlefield was raised in a seaside New England town haunted by whispers of arcane lore that remained tantalizingly out of reach to a daughter of well-to-do Baptists. But when her studies at Barnard College in New York lead to an encounter with a secret society, she is offered access to the knowledge she has always sought...if she can pass a test.

Dispatched to California to infiltrate the occult world of a rival magician - a pioneering rocket scientist with ties to the apocalyptic Starry Wisdom Church - Catherine soon discovers that she’s not the only one spying on Jack Parsons. A fledgling government agency devoted to the investigation of weird science in the aftermath of the World War II has assigned a pair of hard-nosed agents to gather information on her target, whose experiments with sex magic and eldritch artifacts are approaching a cosmic crescendo.

Drawn into the volatile chemistry of Jack’s inner circle and tempted with knowledge and power, Catherine must determine what’s at stake for a world threatened by dark forces and decide where her true loyalties lie.

"The standalone prequel to Wynne's Lovecraftian Spectra Files trilogy is a tale of hair-raising, supernaturally tinged suspense . . . As the eager but inexperienced Catherine plunges into a world of 'sex, drugs,and black magic,' the threat of an apocalypse looms and Wynne's precise, high-tension story builds to an explosive finale. Fans of occult fantasy will be happy to sink their teeth into this shadowy world."
-Publishers Weekly