An instantaneous bestseller!

By #1 New York Situations bestselling author Holly Black, the first book in a sensational new series in regards to a mortal girl who finds herself caught within a web of royal faerie intrigue.

Of course I want to end up like them. They’re gorgeous as cutting blades forged in a few divine fire. They’ll live forever.

And Cardan is even more beautiful than the rest. I hate him a lot more than all of the others. I hate him a lot that sometimes when I take a look at him, I could hardly breathe.

Jude was seven years on the subject of The Cruel Prince aged when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to reside in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. A decade later, Jude desires only to belong there, despite her mortality. But lots of the fey despise human beings. Specifically Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King.

To win a place at the Courtroom, she must defy him–and face the consequences.

In doing so, she becomes embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, discovering her own capacity for bloodshed. But mainly because civil war threatens to drown the Courts of Faerie in violence, Jude should risk her existence in a harmful alliance to save lots of her sisters, and Faerie itself.