Skip content
Get a free audiobook AND support bookstores Make the switch
Roses and Rot by Kat Howard
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account
Libro.fm app

Get a free audiobook when you make the switch!

When you start a new membership in support of local bookstores with the promo code SWITCH, you’ll get a bonus audiobook credit at sign-up.

Make the switch

Gift audiobook credit bundles

You pick the number of credits, your recipient picks the audiobooks, and your local bookstore is supported by your purchase.

Start gifting

Roses and Rot

$25.19

Get for $14.99 with membership
Narrator Madeleine Maby
Length 9 hours 55 minutes
Language English
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account

Imogen and her sister Marin escape their cruel mother to attend a prestigious artists’ retreat, but soon learn that living in a fairy tale requires sacrifices, whether it be art or love in this critically acclaimed debut novel from “a remarkable young writer” (Neil Gaiman, American Gods).

Imogen has grown up reading fairy tales about mothers who die and make way for cruel stepmothers. As a child, she used to lie in bed wishing that her life would become one of these tragic fairy tales because she couldn’t imagine how a stepmother could be worse than her mother now. As adults, Imogen and her sister Marin are accepted to an elite post-grad arts program—Imogen as a writer and Marin as a dancer. Soon enough, though, they realize that there’s more to the school than meets the eye. Imogen might be living in the fairy tale she’s dreamed about as a child, but it’s one that will pit her against Marin if she decides to escape her past to find her heart’s desire.

Kat Howard’s short fiction has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, anthologized in best of and annual best of collections, and performed on NPR. You can find it in her collection, A Cathedral of Myth and Bone. She is the author of the critically acclaimed Roses and Rot and the Alex Award–winning An Unkindness of Magicians. She is also one of the writers of the Books of Magic series, set in the Sandman Universe. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, and you can find her on twitter at @KatWithSword.

Libro.fm app

Get a free audiobook when you make the switch!

When you start a new membership in support of local bookstores with the promo code SWITCH, you’ll get a bonus audiobook credit at sign-up.

Make the switch

Gift audiobook credit bundles

You pick the number of credits, your recipient picks the audiobooks, and your local bookstore is supported by your purchase.

Start gifting

Reviews

"Kat Howard is a remarkable young writer, and she's written a powerful first novel, as strong as Emma Bull's War For The Oaks. This is a book about family, about the price we’re willing to pay for art, and the strange music and haunting glades of faerie." Howard weaves a dark and enticing tale of sisterly bonds, fairypromises, and the price of artistic success in this lushly written debutfantasy set in the present-day U.S. As a child, Imogen was certain that nofairy tale stepmother could possibly be crueler than her own mother, acontrolling tyrant. Fortunately, Imogen and her younger sister, Marin, escapedto pursue their dreams: Imogen as a writer, Marin a dancer. After seven yearsapart, the women are reunited when both are selected to be fellows at Melete, aprestigious artist colony in rural New Hampshire. Melete’s fantastical campusseems perfect, but the sisters learn it’s hiding an extraordinary secret:Melete’s creative energy feeds the Fair Folk. Every seven years, the mostpromising Fellow is taken to live in Faery—and Imogen and Marin are shortlistedfor this dubious honor. Howard’s characters are deftly drawn, and her writingis seductive as fairy magic. This story will resonate with readers long afterthe last page. The realm of fairy tales meets the harsh world of the Fae in this starkly enticing debut. With undercurrents of darkness in the midst of the beauty of the arts, this is a Brothers Grimm tale for the contemporary reader. Expand reviews
Get a free audiobook AND support bookstores Make the switch