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.

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.

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.

A charming, mysterious fable that unpacks what it means to be a story and whether we are all simply the stories we hear and tell.

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.

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!

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.

Praise for The Hazel Wood

This eerie debut YA novel puts such a terrifying twist on classic bedtime stories, you’ll not sleep a wink

Simultaneously enticing and fearsome, much like the Hazel Wood of the title … insidiously beautiful