Buy Books, Subscriptions and Tickets

Author: Crosby, Polly

Reading age: from c 12 years

Published on 4 January 2024 by Scholastic in the United Kingdom.

Paperback | 320 pages
128 x 197 x 24 | 234g

 

Control the story, control the world…

Nesta believes in the fairy tales – the true

stories of powerful magical women who shaped and ruled the world

decades ago.

But the world has changed since then, and now, she is forbidden

from wandering too far from the isolated woodland cottage where

she lives with her grandmother. Nesta longs more than anything to

see the city that lies beyond the forest, and when her

grandmother is abducted, she gets her chance, journeying there in

the hope of rescuing her.

But once there, she is horrified to see her grandmother’s

warnings were true: girls are forced to wear certain

clothes and punished if they don’t behave in certain ways.

The city’s Authorities have rewritten history, replacing the fairytale

heroines with weak girls who must rely on men.

Worse still – everyone believes this is how the world has always

been.

Only Nesta knows the truth. But truth is a dangerous

thing, and suddenly she finds herself a target. Can she evade

the Authorities long enough to rescue her grandmother and liberate

everyone else, bringing magic back into the world?

The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Brother’s Grimm in

this thrilling dystopian fantasy

A feminist fairy tale retelling which will make you rethink traditional

stories forever

YA debut from Polly Crosby, the much-loved author of Vita

and the Birds The Unravelling and The Illustrated

Child

A stunning cover by Noma Bar, the illustrator of Margaret Atwood’s

book covers