The epic standalone dystopian romance from the Sunday Times bestselling author of A Study in Drowning and Lady Macbeth. Perfect for fans of The Hunger Games and The Last of Us

SURVIVAL
SACRIFICE
A LOVE THAT RISKS EVERYTHING
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‘Stunning . . . Among the dystopian greats.’ Chloe Gong

‘Brilliant and devastating, Fable for the End of the World will arm you with the strongest tools we have: both anger and hope.’ Allison Saft

‘Knife-edged and tender-hearted, I will be thinking of the final line for years to come’ Courtney Gould

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By encouraging massive accumulations of debt, a single corporation, Caerus, controls all aspects of society.

Inesa lives with her brother in a half-sunken town, barely scraping a living from their taxidermy shop. But their mother has secretly accrued enormous debt – and the only way out is to offer her daughter up to be a sacrifice for Caerus’s livestreamed assassination event: the Lamb’s Gauntlet.

Melinoë is the assassin chosen for this spectacle. The product of years of neural reconditioning and physiological alteration, she’s a living weapon, famous for her cold brutality and deadly beauty. But she’s also haunted by her failure in the last gauntlet, when she broke down live on screen.

But as Mel pursues Inesa across the wasteland, each determined to claim victory, they begin to question what they’ve been taught. Could there be more to life than survival? Could they be capable of more than death?

Could they, against all the odds, be falling in love?

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PRAISE FOR AVA REID

'A gargantuan hit . . . Dark and brooding, skillful storytelling and intricate character development breathe new life into literature. Dripping in atmosphere . . . One to order immediately.' Glamour

‘A bewitching read with prose like gold.’ Tasha Suri

‘A knife of a book: blood-stained, sharply beautiful, and necessary . . . I couldn't look away’ Alix E. Harrow

‘I was spellbound from the very first page.’ Freya Marske