coming in February 2027
A riveting gothic debut about family, power, and beasts—both real and imagined—told by two women centuries apart, for fans of Sarah Perry and Charlotte McConaghy
Pub Date: February 16, 2027 with Ecco / HarperCollins US and UK
Ava, an archivist at Paris’s National Library, spends her days digitizing rare manuscripts, carefully avoiding thoughts of her ex-girlfriend and her strained relationship with her mother back home in Boston. Her quiet life is upended when she discovers the Book of the Beast, an eighteenth-century manuscript recounting the story of Marie-Jeanne Valès, a maid who faced the infamous Beast of the Gévaudan. Believed to have killed over a hundred women and children, the Beast’s true nature has remained a mystery for centuries.
The tale is eerily familiar to Ava, who was told from childhood that one of her ancestors encountered the devil in the form of a beast in the woods and bested it in a fight, triggering a generations-spanning curse on the family. Driven by curiosity and haunted by her past, Ava steals the manuscript and embarks on a journey through France to uncover the truth behind the Beast and her family’s dark legacy.
Centuries earlier, Marie-Jeanne Valès works as a housemaid for the local vicar, eavesdropping as the men of the town discuss what to do about the Beast terrorizing the countryside. As the death toll begins to climb and the woods become more dangerous, her family arranges for her sister, Thérèse, to move into the vicar’s house for safety. Long close with her sister, Marie-Jeanne is unsettled by the new jealousy between them. As the village succumbs to communal panic, Marie-Jeanne begins to learn that the monsters lurking beyond the forest’s edge are rivaled only by those within her own walls.
Lush, heady, and fiercely feminist, Tomorrow We’ll Be Prey is a haunting meditation on the stories we inherit and the monsters we create.
NICE THINGS PEOPLE ARE SAYING
“How many of us grew up with fairy tales about maidens who sat at home while men faced danger? Anna Polonyi researched the true story of a Frenchwoman who didn’t wait to be saved. Polonyi brilliantly weaves together regional legends, generational trauma, and our hope for the future. She underscores the beauty of nature, the cost of corrosive jealousy, and the wilderness of the human heart. Ten years in the telling, Tomorrow We’ll Be Prey is a novel to savor.”—Janet Skeslien Charles, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Library and The Parisian Chapter
“A wonderful, haunting novel about sisters, beasts, lovers, mothers and daughters, and how to make peace with our demons. Anna Polonyi is that rare writer who can, with equal veracity, conjure the past and the present. Tomorrow We Will be Prey is a brilliant debut.”—Margot Livesey, author The Road from Belhaven
“Tomorrow We’ll Be Prey is utterly transporting. Polonyi conjures a lost world that’s thrillingly vivid, richly textured, and gorgeous even in its horror. Like an enchanted night at the museum, Tomorrow We’ll Be Prey brings the picturesque past to life and then scares you to death – never letting you forget that humans are the most frightening beasts of all.”— James F. Thomas, author of Idlewild
“Tomorrow We’ll Be Prey is an assured, elegant, deeply felt novel that is haunted by the long past while being radiantly alive–to the present, to the body, to love and danger and their descendants. Polonyi has given us a complete world, sensuously rendered, full of feeling, sparkling with intelligence. A joy to read.”—Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of All This Could Be Different.