Lady, the Tiger and the Girl Who Loved Death

Helen Marshall is Senior Lecturer of Creative Writing at the University of Queensland. She has won the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award and the Shirley Jackson Award and received endorsements from authors such as Kelly Link and Paul Tremblay. Her debut novel The Migration, was one of The Guardian's top science fiction and fantasy books of the year. She lives in Australia. Find her on Twitter/X @manuscriptgal and on Instagram @hairside

Praise for The Lady, the Tiger and the Girl Who Loved DeathShortlisted for the 2026 Sunburst Award.This is a fable-like fiction that invokes the carnivalesque, alongside hails of bullets, living gods, and references to seers and elf-children. It's a song of brutality and mystery and a fierce desire to be free... Sydney Morning HeraldThis is a gorgeous, brutal dream of a book. It asks questions about power and belief, about time and magic and love, and every sentence pulses with danger and beauty. It will haunt me for a long time. I implore you all to lose yourself in its strange enchantments.- Sarah Brooks, bestselling author of The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the WastelandsExtraordinary. Helen Marshall channels the best of Angela Carter then takes it up a notch or three. A gloriously bewitching new tale from one of our best fabulists.-Angela A.G.-Slatter, award-winning author of The Briar Book of the DeadOne of the best fantasists working in the field... Fiercely imaginative and tricksy... underscores the power of stories to manipulate and control LocusThe Lady, the Tiger, and the Girl Who Loved Death blew my mind, and forever changed how I looked at writing. Haunting and soaring, transcendent, and masterfully executed - Helen Marshall's talent is unparalleled.-Tashan Mehta, author of Mad Sisters of EsiLyrical, beautiful and brilliant, The Lady, the Tiger and the Girl Who Loved Death is a magic puzzle box that surprises and delights with every revelation.-Kaaron Warren, author of The UnderhistoryChillingly beautiful, with wonder and dread in every word. Fans of Pan's Labyrinth, The Night Circus and The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands should be first in line for the big-top spectacle of Marshall's lyrical storytelling and wild imagination.-Chris and Jen Sugden, authors of High VaultageIt is a rare story which manages to be thoughtful and colourful at once. Angela Carter did that, and now Helen Marshall does it in her own way. A book which you can't stop reading, and then you can't stop thinking about.-Francesco Dimitri, author of The Dark Side of the SkyHelen Marshall's writing is, as ever, mesmerising. She has a vivid, keen-eyed vision of the past and its possibilities, of hope and hatred, of cold realities and dark dreams colliding. This is a sensuous, spellbinding read.-Aliya WhiteleyGilded in bone-dust, with the breath of a predator, Marshall's The Lady, the Tiger, and the Girl who Loved Death is a pageant of the masks myths and politics alike wear as they pace their cages, and the bloody chains that bind them.-Kathleen Jennings, author of HoneyeaterNeither the Lady, the Tiger, nor the Girl are who you expect them to be in this stunning novel of familial longing, authoritarian horror, and revolutionary fire. There's a dark space between devotion and obsession, loyalty and obedience, sacrifice and self-destruction, and ambition and ruthlessness. In those dark spaces Helen Marshall has conjured a burning flourish of a novel that will linger in you like a bullet.-Bryan Camp, author of Gather the FortunesA poignant journey into the stories we seek, the stories we find, and the stories that find us. Gorgeously written, magical and wise. This is both a fable for today, and a fire-side tale, at once timely and timeless. Helen Marshall conjures up worlds like a magician, full of wondrous things, of colour and sensuality, raw truths and heartbreak. She is the master storyteller we have been waiting for.-Marian Womack, author of On the Nature of Magic