Do What Godmother Says By L.S. Stratton

A modern-day writer and a Harlem Renaissance artist are connected by a painting with a deadly secret in this gripping dual-timeline gothic thriller.

Shanice Pierce knows better than to heed bad omens. But it’s hard to ignore the signs when she finds herself newly single and out of a job on the same seemingly cursed day.

Then, while cleaning out her grandmother’s house, Shanice comes across a painting. Drawn to the haunting portrait in a way she can’t explain, Shanice accepts her grandmother’s offer to keep the family heirloom.

She soon uncovers the story of the artist, a Harlem Renaissance painter named Estelle Johnson. The young woman was taken under wing by the wealthy art patron Maude Bachmann—or “Godmother” as she insisted her artists called her—and vanished shortly after Bachmann’s brutal murder.

As Shanice digs deeper, the paranoia that’s haunted her for years returns. She becomes convinced she’s being stalked, and that the deaths happening around her are connected to the staggering offer she turned down for the painting.

But the truth hiding in plain sight is even more shocking—and deadly—than Shanice could possibly have imagined . . .