The Maiden And Her Monster

The forest devours women who venture out after dark. As a healer's daughter, Malka has seen firsthand the havoc the forest's curse has wreaked on her village. Yet when the Ozmini Church arrives to collect its tithe, it disregards the villagers' warnings about a monster lurking in the woods.

After a young cleric gets too close to the forest and Malka's mother is accused of her murder, Malka strikes an impossible deal with a fanatical Ozmini priest: if she brings the monster to him, he will spare her mother's life.

Venturing into the blood-soaked forest, Malka finds a monster, though not the one she expected, but an enigmatic and disgraced golem who agrees to help her on the condition that Malka accompanies her to free the imprisoned rabbi who created her.

But an agreement easy to strike is not always easy to keep, and as their pact begins to unveil a far more sinister threat, protecting her people might force Malka to endanger the only person she had to leave her home for... and confront her feelings for the very creature she was taught to fear.

"Wonderful, richly detailed prose. The Maiden and Her Monster is a dark, atmospheric, and captivating debut novel, woven around a unique love story."

—Samantha Shannon, author of The Priory of the Orange Tree