The Hazel Wood | Paperback

A missing mother. A forbidden estate. A collection of fairy tales that may not be fiction at all.

Seventeen-year-old Alice has spent most of her life moving from place to place with her mother, always trying to outrun the strange streak of bad luck that seems determined to follow them.

Then Alice’s grandmother dies.

Althea Proserpine was the reclusive author of a cult collection of dark fairy tales, written from her isolated estate known as the Hazel Wood. Alice has never known much about her grandmother or the stories that made her famous. But when Alice’s mother disappears and leaves behind a single warning — stay away from the Hazel Wood — the boundary between those stories and Alice’s own life begins to collapse.

Her only possible ally is Ellery Finch, a classmate obsessed with Althea’s tales and the mysterious world they describe: the Hinterland.

To find her mother, Alice must enter the Hazel Wood, follow the trail into the Hinterland, and confront the possibility that the stories she grew up avoiding may know far more about her than she knows about herself.

Melissa Albert’s The Hazel Wood is a dark, atmospheric fantasy steeped in sinister fairy-tale logic, inherited secrets, strange bargains, and the unsettling feeling that some stories were never meant to stay safely on the page.

Reader Guidance

Recommended age: 13+

Romance & spice: Very mild. Romance is not the focus; no explicit sexual content.

Themes: dark fairy tales, family secrets, identity, inherited stories, missing family, dangerous magical worlds, fate, friendship, and the power of storytelling.

Content notes: fantasy violence, death, kidnapping, threatening supernatural figures, strong language, disturbing fairy-tale imagery, and darker themes that may feel intense for younger readers.

Book Details

• Paperback
• Illustrated
• 400 pages
• Dimensions: 1.1 × 8 × 5.2 in
• Publication date: March 26, 2019
• New York Times bestseller

Best suited for readers who enjoy: dark fairy tales, strange forests, supernatural mysteries, books-within-books, sinister folklore, magical worlds that feel slightly wrong, family secrets, and fantasy with a darker edge.