She has a sharp mind... and even sharper teeth.
Insatiable
by Erica Ridley
Genre: YA Historical Horror, Thriller
A chilling Gothic
horror novel set at a coed boarding school in Scotland, where a teen girl must
not only fight against her monstrous male classmates but the monster growing
within her after being cursed.
Every wish granted comes with strings attached. That’s how Catriona Cameron
gets a scholarship to Floodbane Academy—an elite boarding school in the
Scottish Lowlands she never applied to—where she’ll be one of only six girls to
enter the castle’s unwelcoming halls.
She’s not looking for trouble, but after a violent attack, mischievous dark
fairies grant cruel wishes made against her. Catriona is blessed with
devastatingly good looks and unpredictable new powers, but cursed with an
insatiable hunger to devour anyone who preys upon women.
As the carnage mounts, Catriona faces the possibility that she is becoming as
monstrous as those she hunts. Ultimately, is vengeance worth the loss of her
humanity?
**Releases September 22, 2026 – PreOrder Now!**
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At Floodbane
Academy, the Sabbath is our one day without classes. I’ve convinced my
housemates to spend our free hours exploring the academy’s beautiful and
well-stocked library after morning church service in the chapel.
“Are you certain
the others want us to show up at their kirk?” frets Maisie.
“Do we care what
boys want?” drawls Sorcha.
Fiona and
Euphemia exchange sly looks.
“There are a few
we can’t wait to see in their Sunday best,” says Euphemia.
“Or out of it,” adds Fiona, with a fit of
giggles.
I don’t have a
Sunday best. The school-provided wardrobe is comprised of ankle-length yellow
pelisses to protect from the cold along with identical thick, drab brown
dresses with choking high necklines and scratchy sleeves that stretch down to
my knuckles.
We head through
the woods together. In my friends’ company, I feel braver, and bring up the
rear of the line today rather than ensconce myself in the middle.
Right when we
pass the broken branches where Mungo snatched me off the trail, my feet once
again explode with excruciating pain, as if the bones I’m walking on have shattered.
I stumble
forward, knocking into Ishbel.
“Sorry,” I gasp.
She shoots me a
concerned look over her shoulder. “Are you all right?”
I grimace from
the repeated jolts of shooting pain. “I… I can’t…”
Her expression
fills with empathy, and she lowers her voice. “Is it your menses?”
If it is, the
monthly week of blood had never before brought with it a torture such as this.
Unable to
formulate words, I wave her back forward so that she doesn’t trip and break a
bone of her own on a stray tree root.
My feet now feel
like crushed glass. I cannot keep walking. I hunch over, almost retching, and
brace my hands on my knees. When I’m certain I’m not about to spill breakfast
onto my skirts, I lift up my hems to make sure my poor booted feet are still there.
They are not.
I stare in
stupefaction, unable to process what I’m seeing. My boots are gone. My feet are gone. In their place are the
skinny, downy brown legs of a deer, each culminating in large, jet-black, rock
hard hoofs.
“What in the…” I
whisper in disbelief. My heartbeat bangs in my ears.
Ishbel starts to
turn around.
I drop my hems
and jerk upright, wobbling on my two-toed cloven hoofs with their unfamiliar
thick black rigid toes poking out from where my feet ought to be.
“You’re sure
you’re feeling well?” Ishbel asks.
I’ve never been
less well in my entire life.
There’s no way I
can tell her what’s going on, because I haven’t any clue myself. All I know for
certain is that I cannot show up in church with feet like Satan’s hoofs.
“Go on without
me,” I manage. “I’ll meet you all in the library after kirk service.”
I shan’t go
anywhere near the academy with legs like these. My knees are starting to bend
the wrong way.
“You’re going to
walk back home by yourself?” Ishbel
echoes in disbelief. “I’ll come with you.”
“No!” I cringe in
remorse when she flinches back from me. “It’s not you. It’s me. I need to be
alone for an hour or two to… cry, probably. You know how it is.”
She nibbles her
lower lip, unsure which path makes her the better friend. “You’re certain
you’re all right?”
I will never
again be all right.
Erica Ridley is a New York Times bestselling
author of witty, historical novels, including the critically acclaimed Wild
Wynchesters series, and her debut young adult novel, The
Protégée. When not reading or writing, Erica can be found eating
künefe in Turkiye, zip-lining through rainforests in Costa Rica, or getting
hopelessly lost in the middle of Budapest.
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