Lady Macbeth

Fair is foul and foul is fair.

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of A STUDY IN DROWNING comes a reimagining of Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare’s most famous villainess, giving her a voice, a past, and a power that transforms the story men have written for her.

The Lady knows the stories: that her eyes induce madness in men.

The Lady knows she will be wed to the Scottish brute, who does not leave his warrior ways behind when he comes to the marriage bed.

The Lady knows his hostile, suspicious court will be a game of survival, requiring all of her wiles and hidden witchcraft to survive.

But the Lady does not know her husband has occult secrets of his own. She does not know that prophecy girds him like armour. She does not know that her magic is greater, and more dangerous, and that it will threaten the order of the world.

She does not know this yet. But she will.

Review

Reid takes one of Shakespeare's most interesting antiheroes and endows her with vulnerability, power and depth: a protagonist who's neither flower nor serpent, but something both more magical and more human. This is a darkly gorgeous feast of a book, rich with irony and invention. I was spellbound from the very first page. ― Freya Marske, bestselling author of The Last Binding trilogy

Lady Macbeth is a dark, elegant, heart-stirring novel, beautifully written, rich with the history of language and of medieval Scotland. This tale of a tortured, appealing, resourceful woman carves its own life from the Scottish play in a unique and powerful way. I loved every page. ― Louisa Morgan, author of The Ghosts of Beatrice Bird

Queen! Ava Reid has done it again in this gothic, atmospheric reclamation of the story of Lady Macbeth. Scotland's cold will seep into your bones, but the kernel of hope that burns in all Reid's stories will keep you warm as you watch the scheming, vulnerable Lady Roscille fight for her autonomy in a world that would define her in relation to men alone. ― Vaishnavi Patel, New York Times bestselling author of Kaikeyi

Lady Macbeth is a bewitching read with prose like gold. ― Tasha Suri, World Fantasy award-winning author of The Jasmine Throne

Lady Macbeth is a knife of a book: blood-stained, sharply beautiful, and necessary. It doesn't retell Shakespeare so much as slice cleanly through it, revealing what was hidden beneath. I couldn't look away. ― Alix E. Harrow, New York Times bestselling author of Starling House

About the Author

Ava Reid is the award-winning and Sunday Times bestselling author of the critically acclaimed adult fantasies Juniper & Thorn and The Wolf and the Woodsman, as well as A Study in Drowning. After obtaining her degree in political science from Barnard College, she moved to Palo Alto, where she continues to haunt university libraries.