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The City of Stardust

The City of Stardust

Current price: $29.00
Publication Date: January 30th, 2024
Publisher:
Redhook
ISBN:
9780316561488
Pages:
352
Usually Ships in 1 to 5 Days

Staff Reviews

What a ride this book was! This mystical and dark mystery had me hooked after the first chapter and didn’t let me go until the end! The reader follows Violet Everly, a sharp and determined young woman, on her search for her missing mother. This search takes her all around the world and then some, but it isn’t the fun adventure you may be picturing. Violet is also on the run. You see, her family is cursed, and the terrifying immortal woman who cursed them is looking for Violet to collect payment in blood. Her blood.
The twists in this story are spectacularly done, and I loved every second of reading it! I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys dark academia, murder mysteries set in fantasy worlds, and a pinch of complicated romance.

— Isabella B.

Full of intrigue and mystery, The City of Stardust is a whimsical adult fantasy novel with intricate worldbuilding and beautiful, immersive writing. This book is perfect for the readers who love to get lost in a whole, different world.

Sara Canelon, Adventures By The Book, San Diego, CA
February 2024 Indie Next List

Description

A #1 International Bestseller • An Amazon Best Book of February 2024 • An IndieNext Pick 

"A dark dream of a novel...that feels both timeless and original. Enjoy—and also beware. This fairy tale is deadly." —Laini Taylor, New York Times bestselling author

Slip into a lush world of magic, stardust, and monsters in this spellbinding contemporary fantasy from debut author Georgia Summers.

For centuries, the Everlys have seen their best and brightest disappear, taken as punishment for a crime no one remembers, for a purpose no one understands. Their tormentor, a woman named Penelope, never ages, never grows sick – and never forgives a debt.

Violet Everly was a child when her mother left on a stormy night, determined to break the curse. When Marianne never returns, Penelope issues an ultimatum: Violet has ten years to find her mother, or she will take her place. Violet is the last of the Everly line, the last to suffer. Unless she can break the curse first.

Her hunt leads her into a seductive magical underworld of power-hungry scholars, fickle gods and monsters bent on revenge. And into the path of Penelope's quiet assistant, Aleksander, who she knows cannot be trusted – and yet to whom she finds herself undeniably drawn.

With her time running out, Violet will travel the edges of the world to find Marianne and the key to the city of stardust, where the Everly story began.

Praise for The City of Stardust: 

"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. Enthralling to the last page." —Shelley Parker-Chan

"Summers' debut is a dark, gorgeous tale of curses, gods and monsters, with the love and loyalty of family at its heart." —Sangu Mandanna

About the Author

Georgia Summers is half-British, half-Trinidadian and spent most of her life living across the world, including in Russia, Colombia, and the US. When she’s not doing bookish things, she’s planning her next great adventure. She currently lives in London, but she dreams of one day living in a haunted château with a ghost that cleans.

 

Praise for The City of Stardust

"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 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, New York Times bestselling author

"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

“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 Sea or The Ten Thousand Doors of January will also love this darkly magical book.”—Kat Howard, author of the Unseen World duology

"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

"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 mesmerizing." —A. Y. Chao, #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of Shanghai Immortal

"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

"The City of Stardust is a transporting fairy tale that transcends the genre with a surprising, contemplative ending that reconsiders the tropes with which it began."

Shelf Awareness