We are so thrilled to welcome Margot Douaihy back to Giovanni’s Room for the third time (!!!) as she launches DIVINE RUIN, the newest, darkest, and most soul-searching installment in the Sister Holiday series.

Join us January 15, 2026 at 6pm for an evening of conversation between Margot and the brilliant Tonya C. Hegamin. If you’ve been with Sister Holiday since Scorched Grace or Blessed Water, you know Margot’s poetic noirs hits hard. And Divine Ruin takes Sister Holiday deeper than ever into New Orleans’ underworld, addiction, faith, and the razor’s edge between salvation and self-destruction.

We can’t wait to celebrate Margot, this phenomenal series, and all the readers who’ve embraced Sister Holiday’s fierce, flawed, unforgettable voice. See you soon!

In the latest in the USA Today bestselling, award-winning, critically acclaimed series, New Orleans punk rock nun-detective Sister Holiday plunges into a “hellish underworld of drug trafficking, addiction, and her own dark past in a journey that is both riveting and sacred.” (Ana Reyes, New York Times bestselling author of The House in the Pines)

It’s a steamy, restless end of the school year in New Orleans. Sister Holiday is finishing her music classes and preparing for her permanent vow ceremony, a pivotal moment in her journey of faith. But when one of her favorite students is found dead of a fentanyl overdose, Sister Holiday and her partner-in-PI, Magnolia Riveaux, are determined to track down the drug dealers. As students continue to fall prey to this sinister drug, Sister Holiday becomes more desperate to stop the epidemic–while facing her own past with addiction, a demon that is never too far.

With Douaihy’s signature mix of grit, heart, and faith, Divine Ruin tests the limits of Sister Holiday’s devotion in her darkest and most shocking case yet.

Margot Douaihy lives in Northampton, MA, and is a professor of creative writing at Emerson College. She is the author of the award-winning, nationally bestselling Sister Holiday series, in addition to the poetry collections Bandit/Queen: The Runaway Story of Belle Starr, Scranton Lace, and Girls Like You. Her debut mystery, Scorched Grace, won The Pinckley Prize in Crime Fiction and was named a Best Crime Novel of the Year by the New York Times, Guardian, and others.

Tonya C. Hegamin, MFA (she/her), is a queer and (dis)abled award-winning author and educator of Black and Native American (Lenape/Nanticoke) descent.Her honors include awards from the New York Public Library, The Christopher Foundation and more. Her books, Most Loved In All the World, M+O 4EVR, Pemba’s Song and Willow have received honorable mentions and starred reviews in Publisher’s Weekly and have been featured in USA Today, The Washington Post, Ebonyand Essence. Hegamin is a tenured Associate Professor in the English and World Languages Department at the City University of New York’s Medgar Evers College. Tonya is also a feedback facilitator at Oxford University’s Centre for Life Writing, where she also teaches workshops on writing difficult subjects.