Instead of trying to find your perfect match in a dating app, we bring you the “Author-Reader Match” where we introduce you to authors you may fall in love with. It’s our great pleasure to present Helene Wecker!
Writes:
I write award-winning historical fantasy (with a romantic twist!) about unlikely immigrants in early 20th century New York. My newest book, THE GATES OF MIDNIGHT, is the conclusion to the Golem and the Jinni trilogy, which draws on Jewish and Arab folklore to tell the story of two fantastical beings who must learn to navigate the human world – and their feelings for each other – while facing dangers from their shared past.
About:
You can take the girl out of the Midwest, but you can’t erase the hotdish from her soul! I grew up in suburban Chicago and spent my early adulthood in Minnesota, then ricocheted between Seattle and New York before finally settling in Northern California. I love to read tales of strangers in strange lands, misunderstood magical outcasts, and lonely gods and goddesses. I draw my writing inspiration from the Jewish background I was born with and the Arab heritage I married into, and I tend to write books about monsters that examine what it means to be human.
What I’m looking for in my ideal reader match:
• Loves to immerse themselves in a detailed historical setting
• Is willing to fall a little bit in love with a sympathetic monster
• Enjoys characters who treat arguing like a love language
• Appreciates a meeting of opposites with something unexpected in common
• Luxuriates in the slowest of burns
What to expect if we’re compatible:
• A female golem who enjoys baking, gardening, and suppressing her terrifyingly violent urges
• A literally hot-headed jinni who thinks that human rules (modesty, religious observance, monogamy, etc.) are for the birds
• A jaunt through the speakeasies and clubs of Prohibition-era Manhattan
• A side trip to the unfinished Empire State Building and its death-defying steelworkers
• Magic spells a-plenty
• Immortality as a curse
• A cast of supporting characters who all deserve their own books
• Unspoken truths that are finally said aloud
• A happily-ever-after that understands that it’s complicated
THE GATES OF MIDNIGHT by Helene Wecker
Narrator: George Guidall
The Golem and the Jinni
A Novel
The long‑awaited final installment in the award‑winning, bestselling Golem and the Jinni trilogy.
At the beginning of The Hidden Palace, the second book in Helene Wecker’s Golem and Jinni trilogy, Ahmad the jinni travels to Syria with the copper flask that holds the captured wizard Yehudah Schaalman. There in the desert he buries the flask for all time… or so he thinks.
In The Gates of Midnight, the riveting conclusion to the saga of the Golem and the Jinni, it’s 1930 and three decades have passed since Schaalman’s defeat. Chava the golem quietly tends to her house and garden in Brooklyn, hoping to create a refuge for other magical beings. Meanwhile, Ahmad has found employment as an architect in Chicago, helping to build its towering skyline above the prairie.
But all is not well in the desert. Schaalman has managed to trick an unsuspecting passerby into digging up the flask, and now it passes from hand to hand as the wizard possesses his victims ‑‑ first a French soldier traveling to New York, then a small‑time mobster ‑‑ all in an effort to get to Chava, the only one who can release him from his prison.
Meanwhile others are gravitating to New York as well: Ahmad, who has lost his job following the 1929 stock market crash; the mysterious Thomas Beshara, a riveter on the rising Empire State Building, who also has hidden ties to Chava and Ahmad; and Kreindel Altschul, who still grieves her own destroyed golem Yossele. Does the reluctant Kreindel hold the key to saving Chava from Schaalman’s revenge? Will Schaalman succeed in escaping the flask, binding Chava to his will, and re‑enslaving Ahmad? Or can they find a way to finally defeat him and free themselves from his power? An earth‑shaking finale to the brilliant trilogy.
Fantasy Historical [ HarperCollins, On Sale: September 15, 2026, Hardcover / e-Book / audiobook, ISBN: 9780062468680 / eISBN: 9780062468703 ]
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About Helene Wecker
Helene Wecker is Jewish, and her husband’s family is Syrian, giving her a unique perspective on these two culture’s mystical traditions and the immigrant experiences of both groups. Her fiction has appeared in the online magazine Joyland, and she has read from her stories at the KGB Bar in Manhattan and the Barbershop Reading Series in San Francisco. She received a B.A. from Carleton College in Minnesota and an M.F.A. from Columbia University in New York. A Chicago-area native who’s made her home in Minneapolis, Seattle, and New York, she now lives near San Francisco, CA with her husband and daughter.
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