The Walkers of Curwood Hardback

“Then she saw it: just a shimmer of something above the water, as though a layer of liquid light flowed across its surface.”

Once, all that stood between Cassie and Julian was a small, wild forest with a river running through its heart. Now there is a whole lot more.

When grief and boarding school take Julian away, the Curwood Forest changes for Cassie. Black hounds move like pieces of the night between the trees. A new tutor arrives, with eyes the colour of silver. Hidden in her mother’s desk, Cassie finds a locked velvet book, embroidered with a shimmering spider’s web. And when Julian returns home, taller, guarded and strangely wild, he is no longer the boy she remembers.

Then Cassie’s parents vanish. To find them, she must follow the river into a world between worlds, where the sun never sets and the oldest magic is woven from the land itself. But someone is waiting for her: someone who knows exactly what she is.

Can Cassie find her way back to her family? To Julian? To herself? Or will she choose the darker path that has been waiting for her all along?

A lyrical Australian nature fantasy of friendship, first love and shapeshifting magic.

Available to order. Printed on demand and dispatched by Bookvault.

About this book

• Title: The Walkers of Curwood
• Author: Alexandra Manfield, an Australian author with a background in plant ecology, based in the Yarra Valley, Victoria
• Series: The Curwood Chronicles, a series of connected standalone novels set in Australia
• Where it fits: A great place to start. Cassie and Julian's story begins here. The River Daughter is a prequel that tells Alisa's story, for readers who want more
• Genre: Australian contemporary fantasy; nature fantasy with mystery, supernatural elements and touches of urban fantasy
• Setting: Inner-city Melbourne and the Australian bush, with a strong sense of place
• Themes: Friendship, family and loss, and the pull between light and darkness
• You'll find: Childhood friends to lovers, a boy with a shapeshifting secret, witches whose magic is drawn from the land, a portal to another world, and found family
• For readers who love: Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver and The Raven Boys, and Lili Wilkinson's A Hunger of Thorns
• Suitable for: Readers aged 15 and up
• Format: Hardback
• ISBN: 9780645399448
• Publisher: Spindle Press, 2022
• What comes next: Son of Shadow, the direct follow-on to The Walkers of Curwood, is coming soon
• Also available: Paperback and ebook