First published 2026
Madeleine gives birth to her daughter Maud after a difficult labor. At twenty-three, she's young for motherhood, a graduate student specializing in Victorian and modernist literature with deep knowledge of fairy tales. Her husband Tom celebrates their new arrival, but within days something feels wrong. Maud cries constantly, feeds endlessly, and her eyes seem to hold ancient knowledge. Madeleine begins to wonder if fairies have stolen her real baby and left a changeling in her place. She searches desperately for answers while Tom focuses on work and encourages her to socialize with other mothers. Her parents visit to clean out her grandmother's house as her father pursues genealogy research. Violent visions plague Madeleine as she struggles with her lack of maternal connection and feels cut off from her former life. The fairy tales she knows end in tragedy, and she realizes the fairies take young women as well as babies. This raises a terrifying question: is her daughter the changeling, or is she herself the one who has been replaced?
Genres: fantasy, contemporary, adult, adult-fiction, psychological-thriller, dark-fantasy
Vibes: ambiguous, atmospheric, haunting, introspective, psychological, unsettling
Tropes: gaslighting, identity-crisis, paranormal-mystery, unreliable-narrator
Period: contemporary
304 pages · Hardcover · Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Content warnings: mental-illness