The Book Eaters
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Aug 2, 2022
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- $13.99
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- Pre-Order
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Sunyi Dean's The Book Eaters is “a darkly sweet pastry of a book about family, betrayal, and the lengths we go to for the ones we love. A delicious modern fairy tale.”— Christopher Buehlman, Shirley Jackson Award-winning author
Truth is found between the stories we're fed and the stories we hunger for.
Out on the Yorkshire Moors lives a secret line of people for whom books are food, and who retain all of a book's content after eating it. To them, spy novels are a peppery snack; romance novels are sweet and delicious. Eating a map can help them remember destinations, and children, when they misbehave, are forced to eat dry, musty pages from dictionaries.
Devon is part of The Family, an old and reclusive clan of book eaters. Her brothers grow up feasting on stories of valor and adventure, and Devon—like all other book eater women—is raised on a carefully curated diet of fairy tales and cautionary stories.
But real life doesn't always come with happy endings, as Devon learns when her son is born with a rare and darker kind of hunger—not for books, but for human minds.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dean's unputdownable debut gives the phrase "voracious reader" a new, very literal meaning. Devon isn't human. She and others like her live off eating books, and they retain all the knowledge they consume. Book eaters are rare, and book eater girls are even rarer. Raised by the isolated, cultish Family, Devon is treated like a breakable princess and fed a steady diet of fairy tales in which the girls are always the damsels in distress. Devon's duty is to grow up and produce two children by two different husbands to ensure the survival of their species. Willful and stubborn in nature, Devon has always chafed under the Family's control and when her first son is born not a book eater but a far more dangerous mind eater, she goes on the run to save the boy from the Family, who no longer want him. But to survive, she'll have to find a way to sate the hunger that plagues him, a hunger far more sinister and alien than her own. The fascinating magic system, impeccable and unusual worldbuilding, and well-shaded characters will keep readers riveted through every twist of this wild ride. Gothic fantasy fans will want to snap up this thrilling tale.
