The Children: A Novel

Description

National bestseller. A Read with Jenna TODAY Show Book Club Pick. From New York Times bestselling author Melissa Albert, with praise from Stephen King and The New York Times Book Review.

Guinevere Sharpe has two childhoods. In one, she and her brother, Ennis, grow up in the wooded shadow of their family’s isolated Vermont farmhouse. In the other, they live inside the pages of their mother Edith Sharpe’s world-famous Ninth City books, where their fictional adventures have made them household names.

But Guinevere’s real childhood is not the enchanted story readers imagine. She and Ennis grow up near-feral, underfed and left to roam the wild woods around the farmhouse. As Edith’s books become wildly popular, the dangers of their rural childhood shift into the pressures and perils of fame, until one night everything ends in fire, leaving Edith’s series unfinished and her children as the only survivors.

Now an adult coasting on her mother’s name, Guinevere is promoting a ghostwritten memoir when her estranged brother announces a new art installation titled Mother. As rumours swirl around a death connected to his previous show, unsettling memories from Guinevere’s childhood begin to return.

Forced to confront the questions she has avoided for twenty years, Guinevere must reckon with what really happened the night of the fire and what dark history lies behind her mother’s beloved fantasy world.