The Midnight Obituary Press
A YA Paranormal Mystery

About this book:

Seventeen-year-old Iris Finch knows the language of hot lead and linotype slugs better than most kids know text messages. In the basement of the *Blackwood Gazette*, where the air tastes of antimony and oil, she's spent two years mastering the clattering, thousand-pound machines that turn molten metal into tomorrow's headlines. But when the shop's decommissioned "Widowmaker" Linotype roars to life on its own—casting a perfect, smoking obituary for the town's most powerful attorney, stamped with tomorrow's date and a time of death just hours away—Iris realizes the press isn't just printing news. It's writing the future in cold type.

With the prediction burning a hole in her pocket and the named victim very much alive—last seen checking into the seedy Pine Ridge Motel—Iris has twenty-four hours to untangle a murder that hasn't happened yet. Her only allies are Arthur, her gruff, ink-stained mentor who believes in grease and deadlines, not ghosts, and Leo Callahan, the undertaker's quiet, sharp-eyed son who smells of darkroom chemicals and knows far more about Blackwood's buried secrets than he lets on. As the clock ticks toward 11:42 PM, the line between prophecy and setup blurs, and the basement's mechanical heart beats out a terrifying question: is the machine a warning, or the weapon?

Atmospheric, gritty, and steeped in the tactile magic of analog print, *The Midnight Obituary Press* spins a paranormal mystery where the deadlines are literal, the ghosts hide in the machinery, and every edition could be someone's last. Perfect for fans of *The Diviners* and *Lockwood & Co.*, this is a YA noir where the truth is set in lead—and the next edition kills.