Melissa Albert is the author of the Hazel Wood series and a former bookseller and YA lit blogger. Her work has been translated into over twenty languages. She's from Illinois and lives in Brooklyn with her family.
New York Times bestseller
Seven starred reviews
#1 Indie Next Pick
Junior Library Guild Selection
ALA's Best Fiction for Young Adults List
Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year
Publishers Weekly Flying Start
"Albert seamlessly combines contemporary realism with fantasy,
blurring the edges in a way that highlights that place where
stories and real life convene, where magic contains truth, and the
world as it appears is false, where just about anything can happen,
particularly in the pages of a good book. It's a captivating
debut." --The New York Times Book Review (Notable Children's Book)
"An original and imaginative fairy tale: thrilling, fascinating,
and poignant in equal measure." --Entertainment Weekly (Best YA
Book of the Year)
"Insidiously beautiful, this is the opposite of escapist fantasy;
it is a story about the imagination's power to loose atrocity into
the (mostly) law-abiding confines of the real." --The Guardian
(Best Children's Book of the Year)
"A darkly brilliant story of literary obsession, fairy-tale
malignancy, and the measures a mother will take to spare her
child." --The Wall Street Journal (Best Children's Book of the
Year)
"A contemporary fantasy that dwells in an atmospheric, intertwining
world of terrifying circumstances; a breathtaking dive into the
magic and importance of story in one's identity. 'Story is the
fabric of the Hinterland, ' one of the residents tells Alice.
Another says, stories 'create the energy that makes this world go.
They keep our stars in place.' If this is so, Albert's exquisite
wordsmithing and story weaving have kept the stars aloft for a new
generation of readers." --Shelf Awareness, starred review "Alice's
sharp-edged narration and Althea's terrifying fairy tales,
interspersed throughout, build a tantalizing tale of secret
histories and magic that carries costs and consequences. There is
no happily-ever-after resolution except this: Alice's hard-won
right to be in charge of her own story." --Publishers Weekly,
starred review "Highly literary, occasionally surreal, and grounded
by Alice's clipped, matter-of-fact voice, The Hazel Wood is a dark
story that readers will have trouble leaving behind." --Booklist,
starred review "Simultaneously wondrous and horrific, dreamlike and
bloody, lyrical and creepy, exquisitely haunting and casually,
brutally cruel. Not everybody lives, and certainly not 'happily
ever after'--but within all the grisly darkness, Alice's fierce
integrity and hard-won self-knowledge shine unquenched." --Kirkus
Reviews, starred review "The Hazel Wood is thoroughly, creepily
captivating, with surprises I never saw coming! Such a refreshing
and beautifully written inversion of the classic fairy
tale-inspired story." --Kristin Cashore, author of Graceling "This
book will be your next literary obsession. Welcome to the Hazel
Wood, where bad luck is a living thing, princesses are doomed, and
every page contains a wondrously terrible adventure--it's not safe
inside these pages, but once you enter, you may never want to
leave. The Hazel Wood is pure imagination candy." --Stephanie
Garber, author of Caraval
"Dark, spellbinding, and magical. One of the most original books
I've read in years--The Hazel Wood is destined to be a classic."
--Kami Garcia, author of Beautiful Creatures "Elegant, ethereal,
and beautifully brutal, The Hazel Wood is a fairy tale worth
falling for. This is a dream of a book I cannot recommend highly
enough. It's like falling into a nautilus shell: every time you
think you've found the end, another chamber opens. Absolutely
breathtaking." --Seanan McGuire, author of Every Heart a
Doorway
"Absolutely mesmerizing, magical, and inventive. Hats off to
Melissa Albert!" --Karen McManus, author of One of Us Is Lying
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