Every enchantment has a price. With a flick of her paintbrush, Isobel creates stunning portraits for a dangerous set of clients: the fair folk. These immortal creatures cannot bake bread or put a pen to paper without crumbling to dust. They crave human Craft with a terrible thirst, and they trade valuable enchantments for Isobel’s paintings. But when she receives her first royal patron—Rook, the autumn prince—Isobel makes a deadly mistake. She paints mortal sorrow in his eyes, a weakness that could cost him his throne, and even his life. Furious, Rook spirits Isobel away to his kingdom to stand trial for her crime. But something is seriously amiss in his world, and they are attacked from every side. With Isobel and Rook depending upon each other for survival, their alliance blossoms into trust, perhaps even love . . . a forbidden emotion that would violate the fair folks’ ruthless laws, rendering both their lives forfeit. What force could Isobel's paintings conjure that is powerful enough to defy the ancient malice of the fairy courts? Isobel and Rook journey along a knife-edge in a lush world where beauty masks corruption and the cost of survival might be more frightening than death itself.

**A Guardian book to look out for in 2024**'A compelling story from a gifted storyteller … In a moment where refugees are often talked about but rarely heard from, her voice breaks through' GARY YOUNGEA staggering investigation into the costs and consequences of displacement, from a young woman uniquely placed to explore the refugee experience and its aftershocksIn 2015, Aamna Mohdin travelled to Calais to report from the frontlines of the refugee crisis. When she returned to London, and discussed what she had seen with her parents, their response surprised didn't she remember being a refugee herself?Aamna was faced with a reality she had been outrunning for nearly two that her parents had been refugees of the Somali civil war; and that her arrival in the UK aged seven had been preceded by an early childhood in a refugee camp, followed by years of displacement and desperation – as her family, sometimes together but often separated, fought for a place to call home.For the first time, Aamna's parents told her their of the lives they had built in the newly independent Somalia, and the shattering effects of civil war that followed. From London, she travelled to Somalia, a homecoming to a place that had never been home; before retracing her parents' flight to Kenya, and the Kakuma refugee camp – the site of a very present refugee crisis, now three decades in the making.Scattered is a staggering investigation into the costs and consequences of displacement, from a young woman uniquely placed to explore the refugee experience and its aftershocks. A powerful reportage, it is also an epic story of returns and reunions; and a joyful celebration of family and belonging.'The only way out of the crisis of exclusion sweeping across the Atlantic Ocean is storytelling … In so luminously recounting the story of her family Mohdin achieves an imaginative breakthrough that everyone should read' SAMUEL MOYN, Professor of Law and History at Yale University

**A Guardian book to look out for in 2024**'A compelling story from a gifted storyteller … In a moment where refugees are often talked about but rarely heard from, her voice breaks through' GARY YOUNGEA staggering investigation into the costs and consequences of displacement, from a young woman uniquely placed to explore the refugee experience and its aftershocksIn 2015, Aamna Mohdin travelled to Calais to report from the frontlines of the refugee crisis. When she returned to London, and discussed what she had seen with her parents, their response surprised didn't she remember being a refugee herself?Aamna was faced with a reality she had been outrunning for nearly two that her parents had been refugees of the Somali civil war; and that her arrival in the UK aged seven had been preceded by an early childhood in a refugee camp, followed by years of displacement and desperation – as her family, sometimes together but often separated, fought for a place to call home.For the first time, Aamna's parents told her their of the lives they had built in the newly independent Somalia, and the shattering effects of civil war that followed. From London, she travelled to Somalia, a homecoming to a place that had never been home; before retracing her parents' flight to Kenya, and the Kakuma refugee camp – the site of a very present refugee crisis, now three decades in the making.Scattered is a staggering investigation into the costs and consequences of displacement, from a young woman uniquely placed to explore the refugee experience and its aftershocks. A powerful reportage, it is also an epic story of returns and reunions; and a joyful celebration of family and belonging.'The only way out of the crisis of exclusion sweeping across the Atlantic Ocean is storytelling … In so luminously recounting the story of her family Mohdin achieves an imaginative breakthrough that everyone should read' SAMUEL MOYN, Professor of Law and History at Yale University