Emily Heil
Writing books full of food, heart, and enchantment
A Pinch of Magic
A cookbook ghostwriter accidentally summons a spirit and must help with her unfinished business in this charming and cozy paranormal novel.
Cam Parker likes being invisible. As a cookbook ghostwriter, she lives a quiet, orderly life well behind the scenes. But when a storm smashes into her beloved grandmother’s house, she’ll do anything to pay for the repairs, even taking on a nightmare celebrity client and returning from Brooklyn to her coastal-Virginia hometown of Silver Cove and all its small-town drama.
Before she can say boo, Cam’s predictable world collapses like an underbaked souffle. For starters, she’s developing inconvenient feelings for carpenter Ian McCabe, who’s equal parts charm and complication. And then there’s the actual ghost Cam accidentally summons from an old cookbook, who apparently needs her help to right a century-old wrong. Cam can barely keep all these plates in the air. But the chaos just might push her to question her cautious approach to life―and finally write her own recipe for happiness.
COMING OCTOBER 6th, 2026.
"Heil’s debut utilizes her national food reporter background to great effect, creating a compelling mystery behind Cam’s haunted cookbook, along with a cozy romance."
- Kellie Tilton, Library Journal
"Heil, food reporter for the Washington Post, makes her romance debut with a sweet feel-good tale of friendship, family, small-town life, and righting a historical wrong that is also a thoroughly enjoyable combination of romance, mystery, and the paranormal."
- Diana Tixier Herald, Booklist
Meet Emily
Emily Heil writes about food, magic, ghosts, and what happens when life turns out like you least expected.
Emily is a national food reporter for The Washington Post, and has been a professional journalist since she got her first writing gig at her small hometown newspaper at the age of sixteen.
She lives on Capitol Hill with her fellow-journalist husband and two cats, and spends as much time as possible at her childhood home on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.
A LITTLE MAGIC, IRL
SAY HELLO
For interviews, events, bookish questions, or just to talk magic, you can find Emily at [email protected](opens in new tab).
(opens in new tab)(opens in new tab)(opens in new tab)