A Short Excerpt from Jezebel’s Island: A Psychological and Mystery Thriller by Gabriela Marie Milton Coming in July at Literary Revelations

A Short Excerpt from Jezebel’s Island: A Psychological and Mystery Thriller Coming in July at Literary Revelations

The asphalt road sloped down toward the ocean, bordered by towering palm trees and white, two- to three-story buildings. Anastasia walked, wondering how many more times in her life she would come here. She had only seen this street from the point where it intersected with the bustling lanes of Grand Avenue, never imagining that her own footsteps would one day echo on these narrow, sunburned sidewalks.

She looked around. Roses choked terraces; the palm trees’ leaves hung over the pavement like huge, ragged wings. Here, according to Lady Swattley, within one of these silent homes must once have lived the young scientist with whom Jezebel had been in love.

She came to a dead halt in front of a weathered three-story building. It was the tallest structure on Robbia Street. She did not know why she had stopped there. Her instinct told her that Jezebel had spent years of her youth climbing the stairs in that house. Closed blinds covered every window. The yard was full of unkempt flowers. Anastasia studied the white walls, cracked by time. Did these cracks still hold the echoes of Jezebel’s sighs, echoes of Jezebel’s voice during her afternoons of love?

She thought she heard a voice. The voice of a woman. She couldn’t understand anything until another masculine voice said:

— Death.

Anastasia pressed her palms against her temples. The street was entirely empty. A few seconds later, a sleek yellow car glided past her and turned onto Grand Avenue. The driver waved at her.

She heard Jezebel’s words:

— This City is populated by empty souls who flatter themselves into believing they have authentic hearts in their chests. What they classify as joy is nothing more than a temporary chemical exhilaration. They are joyous, Anastasia my dear, but their bliss is delusional.

Was Jezebel correct? Were humans in this City intoxicated by commercial advertisements inviting them to purchase happiness under the pretext of prolonging their expiration dates?

A sound startled her from the direction of the house. She turned, and there, perched atop the roof, sat two white swans, their wings beating a frantic, rhythmic tattoo against the sky.

A Note by the R. M.

Gabriela Marie Milton’s Jezebel’s Island utilizes a deeply atmospheric, fractured, and symbolist narrative style that shares distinct genetic markers with the surrealist prose of Gabriel García Márquez and the psychological, maze-like prose of Jorge Luis Borges. Milton consciously rejects a traditional linear trajectory, constructing her dystopian thriller through fragmented cinematic flashes, abrupt transitions, and heavy thematic loops where “the beginning is the end”. This structural ambiguity and reliance on surreal motifs—such as ghostly swans, shifting eye colors, and uncanny character mirrors—evokes the magical realism of García Márquez, while her focus on labyrinthine setups, philosophical text-within-a-text revelations, and characters seeking their own existential identity heavily mirrors the cerebral, puzzle-box literature of Borges. However, while those masters often maintain a certain mythic or detached distance, Milton infuses her style with the visceral, modern anxiety of a psychological thriller, using sensory disorientation (such as headaches, cold dread, and the contrasting “plasticine” superficiality of the City) to make the reader an active, trapped co-investigator in her surreal maze.

Thank you for reading!

Gabriela Marie Milton,
Author and Founder of Literary Revelations
Woman of the Month (May, 2026), at P.O.W.E.R Magazine
One of the 60th Women’s Entrepreneurs to Watch for in 2026, New York Weekly

My books (Only English)

#1 Amazon bestseller, Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings (Vita Brevis)
#1 Amazon Bestseller, Women: Splendor and Sorrow (Vita Brevis)|
#1 Amazon bestseller, Haiku and Tanka: Lull, Harmony and Power in Japanese Art – co-authored with Hikari (Literary Revelations)

Thank you to all my followers who reviewed my books.
Please read other reviews here:

Woman: Splendor and Sorrow: Love Poems and Poetic Prose by Gabriela Marie Milton in Portland Book Review
Woman: Splendor and Sorrow: Love Poems and Poetic Prose by Gabriela Marie Milton in Manhattan Book Review
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings in San Francisco by Gabriela Marie Milton in San Francisco Book Review
Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings by Gabriela Marie Milton In Manhattan B

JEZEBEL’S ISLAND: A Psychological and Mystery Thriller, NOTES

Original digital photo by Andrei Marin – used to create the cover

The Map -The Architects and the Wandering: A Guide to the Island’s Shadows

Note: In the geography of this mystery, there is no true starting line. Remember, the beginning is the end.

The City: Occupying only one side of the island, the City is merciless. It is arguably the most merciless character in the story—a silent, suffocating presence that shapes all who dwell within its borders.

Anastasia: A young woman born in the “City.” She wanders through mystery after mystery, mirror after mirror, ripping veil after veil only to discover new mysteries until she finally understands her destiny.

Jezebel: The visionary architect of fate, a fabulous character—an almost mythical figure whose true intentions are found to be as layered and shifting as the island itself. Rising from the ashes, she leaves us to wonder: Will she make them bloom?

The Captain: A figure whose influence persists long after his demise. Though dead, his cruel legacy remains an immovable weight. Will anyone be able to transcend it?

Lady Swartley: An embodiment of the island’s elite influence and tradition—or so many think. But she is much more. Find out.

David: The inheritor. His real thoughts, not just his actions, will mislead you at first. Pay close attention to what remains unsaid—and what he does in the end.

Esteban: Enigmatic and elusive. Try to understand his role—this is the challenge every reader must face in the literature of the enigma.

Armando: A servant whose presence masks a much deeper, hidden complexity. But is he a servant only?

Gabriela Marie Milton: The author. She built this island, woven these veils, and laid these mirrors. She knows the way out—but will she guide you, or will she leave you to wander?

A Note on the Atmosphere of Jezebel’s Island

As you prepare to embark on the journey within Jezebel’s Island, I want to offer a brief guide on how to approach the narrative.

Reading this novel is less about following a linear path and more about surrendering to an experience. You will likely feel as though you are wandering through a fever dream alongside Anastasia. The narrative is intentionally disjointed, designed to mirror the instability of a world where reality is constantly filtered through the haze of dreams, fragmented memories, and persistent rumors.

To fully immerse yourself in this psychological landscape, I encourage you to set aside the search for traditional cause-and-effect transitions. Instead, allow yourself to be drawn into the thematic atmosphere. Pay close attention to the recurring motifs—the imposing presence of the mountains, the haunting reflection of the mirror, and the encroaching silence of the “void.”

These are not merely background elements; they are the anchors of the story. If you embrace this visceral, psychological engagement, you will find that the story’s true meaning lies not in the “what happens next,” but in the haunting resonance of the world itself.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts as you navigate the island.

Excerpt

What’s wrong with us devouring each other? God gave up the fight, and God says that the mightier should crush the weaker. On the table was a pineapple, and a knife was stuck in it. The pendulum chimed. It was 6:30 am. The Captain turned his back to me, rummaging in the box with cigars. He took them one by one, sniffing them. I tried to look away from the knife, but I couldn’t. In seconds, I lived through dozens of possible futures. I could have picked up the knife; I could have waited for him to turn around… I saw him already full of blood, from head to toe, slumped on the marble floor, dying… Twisted on the floor, the white floor full of blood… in that vision, it seemed to me that he was muttering: the mightiest must crush the weakest. It seemed to me that his gasp had already transformed into the laughter so familiar to me, into that sarcastic laughter. The mightier must crush the weaker. The mightier must crush the weaker. It is what God wants… Twisted in his own blood, he would not shut up. I couldn’t stand that image any longer… I took the knife. He was still on his back, savoring the smell of cigars.

Thank you for reading!

Gabriela Marie Milton,
Author and Founder of Literary Revelations
Woman of the Month (May, 2026), at P.O.W.E.R Magazine
One of the 60th Women’s Entrepreneurs to Watch for in 2026, New York Weekly

My books (Only English)

Thank you to all my followers who reviewed my books.
Please read other reviews here:

The Beginning Is the End: Jezebel’s Island. Jezebel’s Island: A Psychological and Mystery Thriller

The Beginning Is the End: Jezebel’s Island. Jezebel’s Island: A Psychological and Mystery Thriller

Wishing everyone a glorious week ahead.
I have been asked to explain what Jezebel’s Island: A Psychological and Mystery Thriller is about. Below, please find my description and several cover concepts. Please vote for the cover you like.

The Beginning Is the End: Jezebel’s Island

In an era of fleeting digital ephemera, my latest work, Jezebel’s Island, arrives as a deliberate act of literary preservation. It is a descent into a dark landscape where the atmosphere is thick with the scent of saltwater and ancient, unatoned transgressions.

The island is a study in brutal duality, a fractured terrain defined by two distinct poles from which information is incessantly transmitted: the elusive, enigmatic presence of Jezebel and the formidable Lady Swartley, whose reach is as absolute as it is chilling. These two figures operate like a duo in a dark noir fairytale, their influence seconded by a pair of men, David and Esteban, whose own shadowed secrets add new, impenetrable veils of mystery to the narrative. Caught in this harrowing transmission is Anastasia, the receptor—a young woman whose internal architecture begins to crack under the weight of the signals she receives, eventually transforming her into a living mirror of the island’s catastrophic history.

Across the island’s divide, in the landscape’s hidden places, with flowers and purposely placed images of elegant rooms, sins were committed in the name of power. These are not merely historical echoes, but active, haunting remnants that define the island’s very soul. Here, I have woven a vein of dark, serrated humor into the psychological dread, a necessary irony that illuminates the absurdity of the characters’ entrapment. It is within these suffocating, labyrinthine halls of manipulation that Anastasia finds herself slowly undone, forced to navigate the blurred, treacherous lines between her own identity and the pervasive toxicity of a place that thrives on the corruption of the spirit.

This is not a novel constructed as a linear progression in which a perpetrator moves from point A to point B and is discovered at point C. It is a non-linear haunting; a circle of obsidian cinematic clues. In this narrative, the beginning is the end. I have navigated these psychological depths with lush language at times and with sparse language at others, refusing to offer easy answers in a space where the boundaries between memory, reality, and illusions are as shifting as the tides. For the reader who seeks to confront the sophisticated, the haunting, and the enduring, Jezebel’s Island is a profound, atmospheric meditation on the devastating cost of the choices we make when we are forced to bear witness to the abyss.

A short excerpt from Jezebel’s Island

“The clinical silhouette of the Interior Minister surfaced in my memory: tall, skeletal, with a tuft of chin hair of an ambiguous, shifting color. He had traveled extensively through every sovereign territory of the Continent, yet he returned from each tour proudly declaring to the ministries how uniquely fortunate he was to reside on the Island. The man was not a complete fool, but he lacked the smallest, microscopic spark of comprehension for any world outside his own programming. He would perpetually remark to the Captain: ‘How incredibly lucky we are to possess the legal right to happiness here.“

Cover Concepts for Jezebel’s Island

Thank you to the exceptional photographer Andrei Marin for allowing me to use his original work in developing the cover concepts. The girls in the picture are real models.

Gabriela Marie Milton,
Author and Founder of Literary Revelations
Woman of the Month (May, 2026), at P.O.W.E.R Magazine
One of the 60th Women’s Entrepreneurs to Watch for in 2026, New York Weekly