‘A curse can be many things.
A wish left out to spoil in the sun, putrid and soft, leaving behind only calcified desire and oxidised envy. Or a poisoned chalice, a mistake tattooed across an entire family tree, with every generation promising, vowing to never sip until they do. Sometimes, it’s a deal and bad luck conspiring like old grifters closing in on an easy mark.
For the Everlys, it begins with stardust.’
For centuries, generations of Everlys have seen their brightest and best disappear, taken as punishment for a crime no one remembers, for a purpose no one understands. Their tormentor is a woman named Penelope, who never ages, never sickens – and never forgives a debt.
When her mother vanishes in the middle of the night, the curse falls on Violet Everly – unless she can break it first. To do so, she must descend into a seductive magical underworld of power-hungry scholars, fickle gods and monsters bent on revenge. She must also contend with Penelope’s quiet assistant, Aleksander, who she knows cannot be trusted – and yet whose knowledge of a world beyond our own is too valuable to avoid.
Tied to a very literal deadline, Violet will travel the edges of the world to find her mother and the key to the city of stardust, where the Everly story began.
After all, curses are made to be broken.
Out now from Hodderscape & Orbit US
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Praise for The City of Stardust
‘A dark dream of a novel, Georgia Summers’s debut is like a sweet shop – an elegant, mysterious one – full of all my favorite things: a grand old house, strange magic, deep lore, a family curse, a cabal, a globe criss-crossing heroine, otherworldly beings, and a new mythos that feels both timeless and original. Welcome to The City of Stardust. Enjoy – and also beware. This fairy tale is deadly’
Laini Taylor, Sunday Times bestselling author of Daughter of Smoke and Bone and Strange the Dreamer
‘A story as darkly wondrous as midnight. Summers brilliantly takes our yearning to open doors to magical new worlds, and twists it into a seductively vicious dream of darkness, blood, and winged horrors. When monsters must be satiated, there is no escaping the choices between love and betrayal; survival and sacrifice. Enthralling to the last page’
Shelley Parker-Chan, Sunday Times bestselling author of She Who Became the Sun
’In opening The City of Stardust, you enter a Gaiman-esque otherworld of scheming scholars and soul-stealing gods, where a daughter’s quest to understand her mother’s absence is as compelling as her fight against an ancient curse. The ghost of the city undone by pride and a broken promise haunts every page of this memorable and accomplished debut’
Lucy Holland, author of Sistersong
‘In this darkly gorgeous tale of yearning and curses, Summers explores the terrible and wonderful power of love in its many forms – enduring, loyal, selfish, toxic, destructive – and what happens when betrayal and survival are but two sides of the same coin. Utterly mesmerising’
A. Y. Chao, no.1 Sunday Times bestselling author of Shanghai Immortal
‘Georgia Summers’s fascinating debut, The City of Stardust, draws readers into a compelling story full of magic, curses, keys, and stories. It asks what we would do to break a curse, to close a door, or to open one. Readers who loved The Starless Seaor The Ten Thousand Doors of January will also love this darkly magical book’
Kat Howard, author of the Unseen World duology
‘The City of Stardust opens with a haunting prologue that weaves as enchanting a spell as any of the terrible and wonderful magic in the book, and it just gets better from there. Summers’ debut is a dark, gorgeous tale of curses, gods and monsters, with the love and loyalty of family at its heart’
Sangu Mandanna, bestselling author of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
‘A starry tale of curses, gods and scholars that glitters with magic. Beautifully spellbinding. I never wanted to leave the City of Stardust!’
M. A. Kuzniar, author of Midnight in Everwood
‘A spellbinding and mesmerising tale intricately crafted with writing that glitters. The City of Stardust is like reading V. E. Schwab for the first time – and it’s a story that will stay with me for years to come’
Bea Fitzgerald, author of Girl, Goddess, Queen
‘With haunting prose and assured world building, Summers’ debut shows promise. The City of Stardust has echoes of Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus (2011) or V. E. Schwab’s The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020), and will intrigue fans of portal fantasies’
Booklist
‘An intoxicating story redolent of Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone and Erin Morgenstern’s The Starless Sea’
The Bookseller
Georgia Summers 