The Widening Gyre

A guilty secret haunts young widow Else as she tries to drown her conscience among the glittering lights of 1920s Berlin.

Else’s husband August returned from the Great War shattered in mind and body. Soon after, she finds herself a widow. Her best friend Hans, a gay man who also lost his partner in the war, joins her on a mission to disappear. There’s no work to be found in the devastated economy, nothing for them to build. But dance parties, cabarets, and hallucinatory nightclubs fill the tormented streets of the Weimar Republic, beacons in the night.

Hans introduces Else to Mae, a sophisticated bonne vivante who teaches Else new ways to forget. But as inflation rises and the social order crumbles, Else finds that her dark secrets refuse to be blotted out. At last, she must reckon with her ghostsor let Mae’s treacherous friendship destroy everything that is left of her.

Author Biography

Amy DeBellis is the author of the novel All Our Tomorrows (CLASH Books, 2025). Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net and appeared in the Wigleaf Top 50 Longlist, and can be found in X-R-A-Y, Write or Die, HAD, Pithead Chapel, Monkeybicycle, The Pinch, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and elsewhere. Originally from New York City, she earned a BA in English from NYU. She has Long Covid and ME/CFS and is passionate about raising awareness for chronic illnesses. She is represented by Aurora Fernandez at Trident Media Group.