Kingdom of the Wicked

Kingdom of the Wicked is the first novel of Kerri Maniscalco's series of the same name, published in 2020. It is set on the island of Sicily, where Emilia and her twin sister Vittoria are streghe: witches who live quietly among humans, work at the family restaurant and keep their magic out of sight, which is the arrangement their family has kept for generations.

One night Vittoria does not come back for her shift at the restaurant. Emilia finds her sister's body, and what was done to it is worse than the murder itself. Grief turns into something she can act on, and she decides to find whoever did it and make them pay, whatever the price turns out to be. The price, as it happens, is forbidden magic and a decision she cannot take back. Her sister was the more reckless of the two, and the book spends its time on what Emilia inherits from her.

Emilia's summoning is answered, and it brings the attention of a prince of Hell who has his own interest in the family. Emilia has grown up being told that her kind must not draw attention, and the summoning breaks that rule in the most public way available to a witch. The book runs on the bargain between them: a demon who is not helping out of kindness, and a set of murders that connect to a larger plan.

Maniscalco builds the series around a revenge story with a demonic bargain at its centre, and the first volume establishes Emilia, the murder of her sister and the bargain that follows. Kingdom of the Wicked continues in later volumes, and the trilogy is set in a version of historical Sicily rather than a secondary world, with the family's restaurant and the island's ordinary life sitting alongside the demons.