Guinevere Sharpe has two childhoods.
In one childhood, she and her brother, Ennis, spend their lives in their family’s Vermont farmhouse. In the other life, they live within the pages of their mother’s world-famous Ninth City books, their fantasy adventures making them household names. Reality paints another picture, and the siblings lives are far removed from the enchated idyll readers imagine. She and Ennis are unwashed and underfed, near-feral as they play in the wild woods.
As the books blossom to epic popularity, the reality of rural childhood clashes with their escalating fame. And then one night it all becomes engulfed in flames, Edith’s series unfinished and the siblings sole survivors.
Now Guinevere coasts on her mother’s name ghostwriting memoirs. Ennis is an artist, long estranged having spurned his family’s legacy, and he soon announces a new presentation titled, Mother. Rumors of a death connected to his last showing rattle Guinevere, and harsh memories from her childhood rise to the surface. Now she has to confront questions she’s been running from for twenty years. What really happened in the fire? And what dark history lies behind their mother’s fantasy world?
Why we’re excited about this book:
YA novelist Melissa Albert is ready to stake a claim in the adult horror world. Albert is the author of The Hazel Wood, The Night Country, Tales from the Hinterland, Our Crooked Hearts, and The Bad Ones. With her adult horror fiction debut, Albert presents siblings processing terrible events from the past while navigating the fallout from unearthing those painful memories. Alix E. Harrow (The Everlasting) says”“I don’t know how, but Melissa Albert has taken my most private nightmares and desires and published them as a dark fairy tale. The Children is a poison apple of a book: glossy, sweet, and absolutely terrifying. I don’t think I’ll ever get it out of my bloodstream.”, and Paul Tremblay (Horror Movie, A Head Full of Ghosts) says: “I might end up using all the adjectives to describe this sharp, lyrical, nuanced riff on family dysfunction and the costs of devoting oneself to art. The Children is a joyously grim, open-eyed, adult fairy tale with the messiest of morals (and I mean that as the highest possible praise), and I had so much damned fun reading it.”
Releasing from William Morrow 2 June 2026, The Children by Melissa Albert is available for pre-order now.
BOB PASTORELLA