A Hunger of Thorns

WINNER: 2024 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, Writing for Young Adults
SHORTLISTED: 2024 CBCA Book of the Year, Older Readers
Selected as one of the Best Young Adult Books for 2023 – Readings Books

Maude is the daughter of witches. She spent her childhood running wild with her best friend, Odette, weaving stories of girls who slayed dragons and saved princes. Then Maude grew up and lost her magic – and her best friend. Storytelling is her only gift that remains.

Odette always hungered for forbidden, dangerous magic, and two weeks ago she went searching for it. Now she’s missing, and everyone believes she’s dead. Everyone except Maude.

Maude is sure she can find Odette inside the ruins of Sicklehurst, an abandoned power plant built over an ancient magical forest -a place nobody else seems to remember is there. The danger is, nobody knows what remains inside Sicklehurst, either. And every good story is sure to have a monster…