The Colony of Lost Souls

by Kelsey James

Genres: 20th Century Romance; Historical Thrillers

Synopsis

A young woman searching for her missing sister in 1930s California is drawn into a dark and dangerous cult in this intoxicating binge of sacrifice and obsession, strange rituals, alluring promises, and a beautiful prison for readers of Emma Cline’s The Girls, California Golden by Melanie Benjamin, and The Final Act of Juliette Willoughby by Ellery Lloyd.

Born a year apart, May and June Anderson were once as close as twins. Time and a loveless marriage changed the once vibrant May into June’s timid counterpart. Now, two years after June abruptly disappeared, May receives a letter from her sister, inviting her to visit a mysterious colony in southern California. Eager to match June’s boldness for once, May doesn’t hesitate.

The Colony is located in a magnificent Spanish Revival-style mansion perched on a bluff overlooking the Pacific, and is presided over by the group’s charismatic leader, Rex. Colony members believe in an afterlife where departed souls mingle, and that the truly enlightened can even summon back the spirits of lost loved ones. May is told that June has recently left on a mission, and she’s intrigued enough to accept Rex’s invitation to stay until her sister’s return.

Drawn deeper into the group, and under Rex’s seductive spell, May undergoes their initiation ceremony. Yet her questions grow more urgent with June’s continued absence—and the warnings of a presumptuous but charming undercover investigator. May has longed for the daring, adventurous life her sister pursued, but her arrival has sparked a dangerous unraveling within the Colony, where nothing and no one is quite as it seems.

Gripping and atmospheric, The Colony of Lost Souls immerses readers in a world of secrets, deception, and unexpected redemption.

Release date: June 24, 2025

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

The writing on the envelope belonged to a murderess. At least, that was what my husband believed. I traced the looping script, both beautiful and rushed, just like her. Reckless, irresistible June. Of course, I didn’t believe for a moment that she’d been responsible for the house fire that had burned her louse of a husband, Jimmy-John, to a crisp. Even if she was, I wouldn’t have cared. I figured he had it coming.

“Who’s the letter from?” My husband, Fred, chewed his toast noisily, dusting the cheerful floral tablecloth with crumbs. I gently slid the letter into my apron pocket, trying not to seem furtive, and turned toward the Hoosier cabinet so he couldn’t see my expression. I took another slice out of the breadbox and popped it into the electric toaster.

“Just my mother.” It never entered my head to tell him the truth. June had vanished two years before, just weeks before the fire, and the police hadn’t been able to locate her. On the lam, Fred had claimed. I’d feared she was dead. I couldn’t understand why else I hadn’t heard from her, the sister whom I cherished more than any other person in the world. I hadn’t believed she’d abandon me. But apparently, for some reason, she had. A lump formed in my throat and I swallowed a sip of coffee, as if the hot liquid could burn it away.

“An invitation to another one of her seances? Looked like expensive stationery.” He frowned. He would notice something like that, and he was right—the envelope was thick and creamy, something a rich woman would send. June had disappeared with nothing but the clothes on her back, as far as we knew. The return address also intrigued me: The Kinima Theosophical Society.

“Yes, probably. Still trying to speak to June.” Like me, my mother had thought June was dead, and she’d never given up attempting to contact her in the beyond. She’d never succeeded, and it gave me slightly more respect for her self-touted psychic abilities, now that June had turned up alive. My mother had always been interested in various forms of spiritualism, and as a child I’d hated her small, gaudy parlor, dark and hot from the drawn curtains and smelling of incense. She had become keen on astrology just before June was born, and decided to name her for her birth month. When I was born less than a year later, I received the same treatment. May and June Anderson, Geminis born under twin stars, she would croon. And like Castor and Pollux, we weren’t truly twins, but growing up we had been so close it had sometimes almost seemed so. I’d worshiped June, who reminded me of a lion, with her tawny-colored hair and gold-brown eyes, who was fiercer and braver than anyone I’d ever met. I looked like her, but a slightly softer version—my jaw less pronounced, my nose smaller, my lips fuller.

“Hmph. Loony, I call it.”

“Yes, dear.” I buttered his toast and handed it to him. He took it without thanks. I pushed down the faint revulsion that bubbled up more and more often lately whenever I looked at him. He was twenty years my senior and had never been handsome, but the three years since our marriage had taken its toll. His hair was almost all gray, now, his belly thicker, his eyes more hooded, and his upturned pillowy lips now seemed poised in a perpetual sneer. We’d been married in 1929, months before the crash, and neither of us had been prepared to weather hardship together. He’d been my father’s partner in the grocery business, and for me the marriage had meant security, and a way to stay involved in the stores that I loved. It had meant a home in a charming Craftsman bungalow in shady, prosperous East Sacramento. I’d always been more practical than June. But now the business was struggling, and I felt like a fool.

“You won’t go, of course.”

“No.” I could barely concentrate on the conversation. I wanted him to leave for work so that I could read the letter alone. I wiped my damp palms on my apron. The kitchen was suddenly stifling. I caressed the edge of the envelope and imagined it instilling me with some of June’s strength. My pulse jumped as I tried to imagine how she’d been keeping herself, what the Kinima Theosophical Society might be like. It sounded mysterious and exciting.

It didn’t matter why she’d gone, why she’d broken my heart and hadn’t written a word until now, I decided. I’d forgive her, just as I always did.

All that mattered was that June was alive.

Oh, the letter was so very like her. After two years, she could spare me only one paragraph. Not be angry! I could spit I was so mad.

But there wasn’t really any question about whether I would obey. I remembered my conviction before I opened the letter that I would forgive her, my relief that she was alive. I took two deep, furious breaths and shoved my feelings down, a skill I’d honed since childhood. Then I went to the bedroom and pulled my dusty leather luggage out of the closet.

The suitcases had been a gift from Fred for our honeymoon, and I crinkled my nose at the memory. I’d done my duty and all that, more than willingly, not only because I am a woman of my word and was ready to keep my end of the bargain, but because I wanted children. I desperately wanted children. However lukewarm my feelings for Fred had been, the promise of a happy home full of children had sustained me. Only none had come. Just several miscarriages and finally one stillborn daughter, my angelic Anna, the year before. I wiped a wet cheek with my palm, willing myself not to spiral into self-pity and despair, not to picture her perfect little hands and rosebud lips, tinged blue. Not to go peek at the nursery still waiting for her down the hall, at her white wicker bassinet with its ruffled skirt that I’d trimmed with lace myself. I’d gone through all that—the melancholia, so bad that I could hardly get out of bed for the months after I’d lost her, the doctors who did nothing to help. No. I squared my shoulders and thought instead of Fred’s sneer as he asked relentlessly after my monthly courses, the resentment in those hooded eyes at what he considered my failures.

I turned the little key in the lock and unclasped the top. The red lining was still pristine; we hadn’t traveled anywhere since those two weeks in Carmel after the wedding. What did one pack to go to a place of miracles?

Undergarments were a safe bet, so I folded sets of brassieres and underwear in peach and ivory satin—luxurious items from my trousseau—and placed them inside along with a sachet of lavender. The girdle was certainly a miraculous invention—in it went. Next, silk stockings and my favorite pair of sturdy-heeled black Mary Jane shoes that went with everything. At that point I became less sure. June hadn’t left instructions on how to get to the place—of course she hadn’t—and I paused packing to consult the automobile map in the glove compartment of the car.

The address on the envelope listed a town called Newport Beach, south of Los Angeles. It was a long drive; I’d need to stay overnight somewhere. I frowned and pinched the map between my fingers. My chest grew tight as I considered the prospect of facing Fred again when he came home from work. Impossible, now that I’d decided to leave him. I wasn’t fearless like June, and if I didn’t go now I might never do it. The surprise of her letter, the excitement of finally hearing from her, had cast a sort of spell on me.

I didn’t relish the idea of driving at night on unknown roads, but our Studebaker was a good car, big and reliable. I’d sleep in it, if I couldn’t find a hotel. Fred wouldn’t miss it too much, as he usually took the trolley to work.

I went to finish packing.

The note I’d left on the kitchen table was an act of cowardice.

What I should have written: I don’t want to be your wife anymore.

He was a shrewd man; he’d draw that conclusion anyway. But as I passed the tin-shacked shanties that had sprung up on the outskirts of the city, the children with dirty worn shoes and hollow cheeks, the knowledge of that note, the little wedge I’d left in the door to my old life, gave me the courage I needed to keep going. Who knew what sort of place June had summoned me to—what sort of future awaited me there?

I hadn’t trusted Fred with the truth about June, because I worried he might alert the police. But I’d mailed a letter to my mother to let her know where I was really headed, since she’d been as desperate for news as I’d been. I doubted she was capable of making her own travel arrangements to go see her, but I wasn’t willing to waste the time it would take to collect her, and more to the point, I didn’t think I could bear her hysterics for such a long journey. I’d assuaged my guilt by promising to call her with an update as soon as I was able.

I found I liked being behind the wheel, in control for a change. My blood juddered to match the engine beneath me, and I drove faster than I ever had before, teetering between terror and exhilaration. The scenery outside blurred together: rolling hills, already turning brown in May, dotted here and there with oak trees; orchards; farmland. Fred was usually the one who drove, and we rarely went farther than Placerville to visit my mother, a journey we made rarely and that neither of us enjoyed. I was proud of myself for my independence.

I stopped at a filling station somewhere south of San Jose, in a dusty, desolate town with an old Spanish mission. It seemed as if there were more people walking alongside the road than driving on it: Mexican and Filipino farm workers; men in flat caps with everything they owned in sacks on their backs; scraggly families with more children than possessions, little ones riding on shoulders. A man with an empty gas can in his hand and hard eyes stared at me while I paid the uniformed attendant. I knew times were hard, of course, but in Sacramento I’d found it too easy to turn my eyes away. Here, on the road, with my old life behind me, I looked.

I considered turning back. I was a woman alone, with a purse full of cash that I’d stolen from Fred’s safe. Instead, I reached carefully into my leather envelope bag and located the old lipstick on the bottom, an expensive tube gifted from June on the last day I’d seen her. “You need more color in your life,” she’d said, and I’d accepted the present even though I knew she couldn’t afford it. Somehow June always seemed to have nice things. It was a daring dark red and I’d never worn it before, instead keeping it as a memento. I took it out and applied it. It felt right, now that I knew she was alive, now that my world would be vibrant again, and it strengthened my resolve.

I got back on the road, propelled forward by adrenaline and gasoline. I stopped as infrequently as I could. I was lucky to find an inn designed for motorists in San Luis Obispo, the Milestone Mo-tel, a small, square, mission-style building complete with a bell tower and a parking space right outside the door to my room.

The clerk at the front desk was a surly balding man in his fifties who glowered at me as I took the registration book from him.

“Checking in alone?” he asked, pointedly, and the fact that I was caught me by surprise. Fred’s absence was freeing, a weight lifted from my chest—but only for a moment. The clerk’s scornful attention made the pressure return and heat rise in my cheeks. I shrank under his sharp gaze.

“No, my husband is joining me.” I swallowed, as if I could take back the lie, then dutifully added Fred’s name to the book. The clerk harrumphed before handing me the key.

I slept a few fitful hours and left at first light. I didn’t want to give myself too much space to think about what I’d done; I yearned for the road and the focus it required. My eyes itched from tiredness and my ears rang from the rattling of the engine.

I drove through the Santa Ynez Mountains, morning mist rising off the steep road, and through a narrow canyon with a bridge spanning a rocky creek. Then, at last, I reached the coast. I’d been looking forward to seeing the ocean, but I could barely make it out through the morning fog.

I stopped again at a filling station, and the smell lingered in my nose as I passed through Los Angeles. I realized why, as oil derricks sprouted up around me, ugly and menacing, like trees in some kind of nightmare forest. On the Coast Highway I saw countless more hulking along the beach, their structures skeletal and eerie in the ocean mist. The marine layer rolled in so thick and wet over the road that I had to turn on the windshield wipers, and they left a greasy, iridescent film on the glass. The air tasted of salt and gasoline.

As I traveled south the derricks, thankfully, disappeared. The address was right on the highway, past the town of Newport Beach, according to the man at the filling station, and I studied the scrubby hills and shoreline through the gray haze, waiting for some sign.

I needn’t have worried. The Kinima Theosophical Society, when it came into view, was unmistakable. After several miles of seeing no buildings at all, a massive mansion materialized from the fog, perched on a bluff above the Pacific Ocean. It looked like something between a Spanish mission and a Moorish palace: white and choked with ivy, complete with minarets and horseshoe arches. The numerous windows shined brightly, like it was a lighthouse guiding me home. It was utterly magnificent. The worry about my unknown future, and the tightness in my chest, eased a little. A place of miracles, June had said, and staring at the otherworldly building before me, I was ready to believe it.

I idled the car in front of the wrought-iron gate and pressed a button in the gatepost. I wondered who would come, and whether June had told them to expect me. After a few minutes a pretty Mexican woman appeared, wearing a flowing blue caftan that dwarfed her petite figure. I stepped forward to state my business, but as I did, her big brown eyes grew even larger and she staggered forward. She lunged for me through the gate and gripped my wrist, hard, making me cry out. Then she released me, her face falling, and let out a keening wail.

“Wait. Excuse me, please.” I called out to her retreating back, my voice high and strident as notes on an untuned piano. She was running away from me, back toward the mansion. I watched her go with disbelief, dread dousing the hope that had swelled in me as I first drove up to the gates. What would I do if no one let me in? I clutched the iron bars, not caring about dirtying my fawn automobile gloves, and peered between the gaps. I couldn’t see a single other soul, although it was difficult to be sure with the haze obscuring my vision, and soon she disappeared behind a grand, metal-studded wooden door. The Pacific Ocean crashed in my ears and my heart beat in the hollow of my throat.

What could have scared her so?

I could leave and find a hotel if I had to, and try again. But I couldn’t accept that after June’s incredible summons, and my long journey, I would simply fail. I pressed the button in the gatepost again, and again.

At last, a man emerged, wearing a white linen safari jacket and matching fedora. Even from a distance I could sense that he had a presence, a pull as strong as the ocean tide. He was a tall man, solidly built, and he walked toward me with ease and confidence that spoke of his importance.

His effect only grew stronger as he neared, and I could make out his features: tan skin, white smile, golden hair, sensuous mouth. He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. He looked like a mythic hero, and I pictured him posing for an artist in one of those valiant stances, naked and muscles rippling. I blushed at the thought, startled by my own impropriety.

“Hello there.” He had a posh British accent, and his eyes, a deep sea blue, widened just as the woman’s had, only he didn’t scream. “I see what surprised her. You look so much like June.” He unlocked a chain on the gates, and they swung open slowly and silently, revealing the full majesty of the house behind him, and my body pulsed with a mixture of excitement and fear. He gestured discreetly and a colored man, wiry and stoic, materialized from the mist.

“Abel will park the car for you, if you’ll follow me.”

I couldn’t find my voice, so I only nodded. The whole scene was so surreal I thought perhaps I might be dreaming.

“We don’t use surnames at The Colony, but you can call me Rex. And you must be May.”

Hearing him call me by my Christian name, as if we were intimates, sent a thrill through me. It didn’t surprise me that he knew who I was, if he knew June. His voice was rich and warm, and seemed to vibrate through me like music.

We entered the house together, the door so large we could walk side by side. I gasped. I expected the house to be grand, but it was more than that: it was a work of art. We stood in a soaring atrium, the glass windows surrounding us forming delicate pointed arches, wooden columns soaring up between them with cornices carved like lotus flowers. The ceiling was yellow stained glass shaped like petals, showering us in warm light. Rex seemed to glow.

Potted plants gave the room a lush, exotic air: palms, ferns, and spiky yucca that speared the air. Oriental rugs casually overlapped on the terra-cotta floors.

The woman from the gate came through a white-stuccoed archway that led to the rest of the house, studying me intently.

“It’s June’s sister,” Rex told her, and I got the impression she was about to cry. She nodded in acknowledgment but didn’t stay for introductions, and quickly went back the way she’d come. I wondered if she was entirely well.

Rex led me to a pair of blue velvet upholstered chairs, a little bronze table between them shaped like a star, and we sat. I tugged off my gloves.

“You must forgive Rosa for her outburst. She thought you were your sister, only you couldn’t have been, since June is elsewhere right now. She—cares deeply for June.” He said the words carefully, and I understood his meaning. She and June must be lovers. This didn’t shock me. I’d known for some time that June liked women just as well as she liked men. The summer after I turned thirteen, June had abandoned me for a girl named Mabel, and I was terrified I’d been replaced. Then one scorching afternoon, so hot even the lizards sought shade, I’d seen them together on a sandbank of the American River. Mabel’s swimsuit had been pulled down, exposing her breasts, white as a fish’s belly, while June’s tongue flicked her bright pink nipples. I knew that I was supposed to be disgusted by what I saw, and that what she was doing was probably illegal, but I was only relieved. I hadn’t been replaced, because she wanted Mabel in a way that was not at all sisterly.

“Oh. I see.”

“Do you?” He fixed me with that marine-blue gaze, so direct and unflinching that I blushed again.

“Of course. I know everything about June.” As I said the words, I wondered if they were still true. After all, I hadn’t seen her for two years.

“We are very open-minded at The Colony. There are others like June. And Rosa and Abel are members here. We don’t distinguish between the races.”

I digested this, surprised but approving. Though I scoffed at some of my mother’s unconventionality, I had assumed her liberal views in this regard. Perhaps it was knowing June’s secret. Or maybe the recent miserable years of my marriage to Fred, done in part to please my more conventional father, had cemented my opinion. At that moment Rosa appeared again, silent and watchful, with lemonade on a tray. There was a look in her eyes I couldn’t make out.

“It’s lovely to meet you, Rosa. Rex tells me you’re a friend of June’s.” I was bursting with questions, but hardly knew where to begin.

Rosa handed me the lemonade, which was thick with ice, the glass so cold my fingers burned.

She managed a small smile, but I got the sense she was still recovering from her disappointment that I wasn’t my sister. “She told me so much about you. I’m glad to finally meet you.” Her eyes darted to Rex. “I have some duties to attend to, but we can speak more later.”

She retreated quickly, as if eager to be gone, and I frowned. I was impatient to see June, or at least hear news of her, and I craved the information she could share. As her lover she would likely have more details than Rex.

“You said June was elsewhere?” I hoped he’d meant she was elsewhere at The Colony. I found it difficult to speak directly to Rex, the same way it was difficult to look at the sun. I was overwhelmed by him.

“Yes. She left on a delicate mission for us just last night. I’m sorry to say that she might be gone for some time. A week, maybe two.”

“No.” My fierce disappointment overpowered my shyness, and I jerked forward so quickly that lemonade sloshed over the glass. “What does that mean, she’s on a mission? Where is she going?”

Rex reclined comfortably in his chair, legs sprawled in a way that was almost indecorous. “The work we do here is hard for outsiders to understand. But part of her role here requires her to travel and share our learnings with those who might be receptive to them. I know she’ll be disappointed she missed your arrival.”

I wiped my fingers on my dress, sticky from the lemonade that had spilled. I took a sip and let it settle on my tongue, as if it could infuse my words with the right balance of sweetness and tartness.

“I’m sorry. It’s only that I didn’t even know she was still alive until yesterday. I have to see her.”

Rex considered me, his expression unreadable and his jaw firm. He probably wasn’t used to people disagreeing with him, and I was slightly astonished at myself for being brave enough to attempt it. “June’s work is of the greatest importance to us. She must not be disturbed.”

I inhaled sharply, the force of my feeling emboldening me. “But surely you can tell me where she’s gone? Please,” I said, cringing at the petulance in my tone. Because what I really meant, but hadn’t said out loud was: What is she doing that’s more important than seeing me? She’d asked me to come here, after all, and I was frustrated and hurt afresh by how thoughtless she could be.

“I wish I could. If you decide to stay with us, in time it will make more sense.” Rex sounded apologetic, and again looked unwaveringly into my eyes, until I squirmed and glanced away. “I hope you will stay, May.” I didn’t think I was imagining his flirtatiousness, and his attention warmed my whole body. Even the glass was no longer cold, its surface slick with sweat. I wanted to keep arguing, but I was too affected by him. I had to hope she’d finish her mission, whatever that could be, soon.

I stared into the ice in my glass as I pondered his invitation. I pictured the motel where I’d spent the night, with its scratchy sheets, stale air, and surly desk clerk. Staying here would be more pleasant, undoubtedly, but without June beside me, I was a stranger in a strange place. But my eyes itched from tiredness and sitting had made my limbs stiff and heavy, and I wasn’t sure I could summon the energy to get back behind the wheel. Besides, I didn’t want to use up more of my purloined funds than was necessary.

“I wouldn’t want to impose,” I said, meekly, but Rex brushed aside my comment.

“We would be delighted to have you as our guest.”

Motion caught the corner of my eye and I turned. A taxidermic lion lounged beside one of the pots, its collar encrusted with flashing red jewels. It was an ugly thing, old and scarred, and I wondered why someone would have made a trophy of such a pathetic creature. And then it stood elegantly, sinuous muscles bunching. I dropped my glass and a pool of lemonade soaked into the rug.

“Oh. Forgive me,” I said, and searched my purse ineffectually for something to clean the mess. I righted the empty glass and set it on the table.

He waved his hand. “Don’t concern yourself. It will be attended to later. And I apologize if Matilda startled you. She won’t hurt you.” Rex eyed the lion in a way that belied his words. “She used to be in the moving pictures. Her former trainer stayed with us, for a time, and he left her behind. My wife has made something of a pet of her. She does everything my wife bids her.”

I clutched the gilded . . .