The Night Country: A Hazel Wood Novel
Description
The New York Times bestselling sequel to Melissa Albert's beloved The Hazel Wood!
In The Night Country, Alice Proserpine dives back into a menacing, mesmerizing world of dark fairy tales and hidden doors of The Hazel Wood. Follow her and Ellery Finch as they learn The Hazel Wood was just the beginning, and that worlds die not with a whimper, but a bang. With Finch's help, Alice escaped the Hinterland and her reclusive grandmother's dark legacy. Now she and the rest of the dregs of the fairy tale world have washed up in New York City, where Alice is trying to make a new, unmagical life. But something is stalking the Hinterland's survivors--and she suspects their deaths may have a darker purpose. Meanwhile, in the winking out world of the Hinterland, Finch seeks his own adventure, and--if he can find it--a way back home... Don't miss Tales from the Hinterland, coming January 12, 2021!Product Details
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About the Author
Reviews
Named a must-read book of 2020 by Entertainment Weekly, BuzzFeed, Hypable, PopSugar, BookPage, and more!
"What Albert renders on the page is audacious: with resounding success, she keeps a firm grip on her characters and their stories, and her prose weaves a magic of its own, animating the ever-expanding fantastical premise through lyrical language, striking metaphor, and a mastery of tone that forces readers to feel the magic along with the underlying emotional stakes." --Booklist, starred review
"This fairy tale noir adventure blends romance and mystery with plenty of action...a must-read for fans of portal fantasies, mysteries, and readers who prefer their magic with bloody sharp edges." --School Library Journal, starred review
"Albert's legion of fans will relish her return to the bloody, terrifying, seductive world of her debut and the inventive brilliance of her storytelling." --The Guardian
"A lush and enchanting tale. Albert effortlessly draws on a wide range of literary references and builds a world where magic really does emerge from pages and where books are not just figurative but literal doors. Dreamy and disturbing in equal measure, it's the perfect antidote to a grey winter's day." --Irish Times
"This follow-up to the astonishing The Hazel Wood displays the same lush prose, dizzying imagination, and macabre sensibilities. A necessary read for Hinterland fans--and who isn't?" --Kirkus Reviews
"Melissa Albert deftly weaves her magic once again between our world and the fairy tale realm of the Hinterland. The Night Country is a new modern classic filled with wondrous delights and daring forays into the dark. Not to be missed!" --Kim Liggett, author of The Grace Year
"The Night Country is so deliciously creepy--the kind of puzzle box nightmare you have to see through to the end. One of the most unputdownable books I've read in a long time." --Emily X. R. Pan, author of The Astonishing Color of After
"Darker, bloodier and even stranger than The Hazel Wood, The Night Country invites the wolf from the forest inside your home. A sinister jewel of a novel, like splitting a pomegranate and finding the inside filled with blood and rubies, every sentence of this book thrilled and chilled me to the bone." --Melinda Salisbury, author of The Sin Eater's Daughter
"Starting with an unexpected kiss that breaks convention and ending with a new beginning, Albert transforms the traditional fairy tale, deconstructing the very notion of a happy story. Dark, yet inviting, The Night Country reimagines the way in which we tell stories through the realistic gaze of a teenager uncomfortable in her own skin. Rife with long-forgotten ghosts, unforgettable tales of fancy, and even a touch of romance, Albert shines in her sophomore novel, pulling the reader once more into the haunting depths of the Hinterland, where Stories rule, whether they know it or not." --Paperback Paris
Praise for The Hazel Wood
New York Times bestseller
Seven starred reviews
#1 Indie Next Pick
Junior Library Guild Selection
ALA's Best Fiction for Young Adults List
Publishers Weekly Flying Start
"The Hazel Wood starts out strange and gets stranger, in the best way possible. Albert seamlessly combines contemporary realism with fantasy, blurring the edges in a way that highlights that place where stories and real life convene, where magic contains truth, and the world as it appears is false, where just about anything can happen, particularly in the pages of a good book. It's a captivating debut." --The New York Times Book Review, 2018 Notable Children's Book
"An original and imaginative fairy tale: thrilling, fascinating, and poignant in equal measure." --Entertainment Weekly, Best YA Book of the Year
"Insidiously beautiful, this is the opposite of escapist fantasy; it is a story about the imagination's power to loose atrocity into the (mostly) law-abiding confines of the real." --The Guardian, Best Children's Book of the Year
"A darkly brilliant story of literary obsession, fairy-tale malignancy, and the measures a mother will take to spare her child." --The Wall Street Journal, Best Children's Book of the Year
"This extremely creepy, wondrously original and beautifully written book conjures up a dark, bloody netherworld of fairytales and enchants and enthralls from the first sentence to the final page." --The Buffalo News
"A contemporary fantasy that dwells in an atmospheric, intertwining world of terrifying circumstances; a breathtaking dive into the magic and importance of story in one's identity. --Shelf Awareness, starred review
"Alice's sharp-edged narration and Althea's terrifying fairy tales, interspersed throughout, build a tantalizing tale of secret histories and magic that carries costs and consequences. There is no happily-ever-after resolution except this: Alice's hard-won right to be in charge of her own story." --Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Highly literary, occasionally surreal, and grounded by Alice's clipped, matter-of-fact voice, The Hazel Wood is a dark story that readers will have trouble leaving behind." --Booklist, starred review
"Simultaneously wondrous and horrific, dreamlike and bloody, lyrical and creepy, exquisitely haunting and casually, brutally cruel. Not everybody lives, and certainly not 'happily ever after'--but within all the grisly darkness, Alice's fierce integrity and hard-won self-knowledge shine unquenched." --Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"An empowering read that will be especially popular with fans of fairy-tale retellings." --School Library Journal, starred review
