A riveting gothic debut about family, power, and beasts—both real and imagined—told by two women centuries apart, for fans of Sarah Perry and Charlotte McConaghy
Ava, an archivist at Paris’s National Library, spends her days digitizing rare manuscripts, carefully avoiding thoughts of her ex-girlfriend and her strained relationship with her mother back home in Boston. Her quiet life is upended when she discovers the Book of the Beast, an eighteenth-century manuscript recounting the story of Marie-Jeanne Valès, a maid who faced the infamous Beast of the Gévaudan. Believed to have killed over a hundred women and children, the Beast’s true nature has remained a mystery for centuries.
The tale is eerily familiar to Ava, who was told from childhood that one of her ancestors encountered the devil in the form of a beast in the woods and bested it in a fight, triggering a generations-spanning curse on the family. Driven by curiosity and haunted by her past, Ava steals the manuscript and embarks on a journey through France to uncover the truth behind the Beast and her family’s dark legacy.
Centuries earlier, Marie-Jeanne Valès works as a housemaid for the local vicar, eavesdropping as the men of the town discuss what to do about the Beast terrorizing the countryside. As the death toll begins to climb and the woods become more dangerous, her family arranges for her sister, Thérèse, to move into the vicar’s house for safety. Long close with her sister, Marie-Jeanne is unsettled by the new jealousy between them. As the village succumbs to communal panic, Marie-Jeanne begins to learn that the monsters lurking beyond the forest’s edge are rivaled only by those within her own walls.
Lush, heady, and fiercely feminist, Tomorrow We’ll Be Prey is a haunting meditation on the stories we inherit and the monsters we create.
