To save her best friend, a young woman must follow the mysterious figure that has plagued her village for generations into his sprawling, otherworldly realm in this dark fairy tale perfect for fans of The Cruel Prince and The Rose Bargain.
Love will unite them. Fate will break them.
In the superstitious town of Hollow there once lived a long and powerful line of witches. Determined to secure their power, they cast a curse on the only one who threatened their reign: the Lord of the Woods—the enigmatic Piper.
But the curse had a price.
Every thirteen years, someone from Hollow is stolen away into the Piper’s realm by his eerie melodies. No one is ever seen again.
Violet, the last witch left, is destined to break the curse. But when her best friend is taken instead, Violet ventures into the strange and enchanted land called Otherhollow to put things right and confront the Piper. But the Piper is wild, and charming, and different from the monstrous villain in her family’s stories.
Her fate is to kill the Piper and break the curse. But now fate must reckon with something wholly unexpected…Violet’s own traitorous heart.
Isabel Strychacz is the author of the YA novel Starling (2021) and upcoming House of Thorns (out 2024). She grew up in a small town in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she read all the books she could find and wrote the books she couldn’t.
She received two degrees in English/Creative Writing and History from Mills College in Oakland, California, and is getting her MFA degree in Creative Writing from Manchester Metropolitan University.
She currently lives in the heart of England with her husband Henry and daughter Imogen, and she works as a copywriter for a PR & Communications agency.