book cover of The Spirit Bares Its Teeth
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The Spirit Bares Its Teeth

(2023)
A novel by

 
 
Awards
2024 Dragon Award for Best Young Adult / Middle Grade Novel (nominee)
2024 Locus Award for Best Young Adult Novel (nominee)

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!
A Stonewall Honor Book in Young Adult Literature!

A blood-soaked and nauseating triumph that cuts like a scalpel and reads like your darkest nightmare.

New York Times bestselling author Andrew Joseph White returns with the transgressive gothic horror of our time!

Mors vincit omnia. Death conquers all.

London, 1883. The Veil between the living and dead has thinned. Violet-eyed mediums commune with spirits under the watchful eye of the Royal Speaker Society, and sixteen-year-old trans, autistic Silas Bell would rather rip out his violet eyes than become an obedient Speaker wife.

After a failed attempt to escape an arranged marriage, Silas is diagnosed with Veil sickness—a mysterious disease sending violet-eyed women into madness—and shipped away to Braxton’s Finishing School and Sanitorium. When the ghosts of missing students start begging Silas for help, he decides to reach into Braxton’s innards and expose its guts to the world—so long as the school doesn’t break him first.

Featuring an autistic trans protagonist in a historical setting, Andrew Joseph White’s much-anticipated sophomore novel does not back down from exposing the violence of the patriarchy and the harm inflicted on trans youth who are forced into conformity.

A Stonewall Honor Book in Young Adult Literature
A Chicago Public Library 'Best of the Best' Book
A Locus Award Finalist
A Kirkus Reviews Best Young Adult Book of the Year
A BCCB Blue Ribbon Book!
A Booklist Editors’ Choice
A Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year!
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year


Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Praise for this book

"An absolute sucker punch of a novel. While the gore and body horror are exactly as brutal and artful as you'd expect from Andrew Joseph White, there's an undercurrent of validating tenderness that makes this story wholly unique. This book will slice you open, shift through your insides, and stitch you closed anew." - Kayla Cottingham

"Andrew Joseph White brings his phenomenal talent and searing prose to an unflinching tale of a violet-eyed boy, desperate spirits, and very human monsters. The Spirit Bares Its Teeth is as brutal and necessary as a surgical incision." - Kate Alice Marshall

"Andrew Joseph White continues to break boundaries into new, deeply chilling forms. The Spirit Bares Its Teeth is a merciless yet masterful dissection of gothic horror that spares no anesthesia, and thankfully so. The hauntings in these pages will find their way into you, so deep that nothing will be able to cut them out." - Ryan La Sala

"A book that cracks and spreads the ribs before massaging your heart underneath, this is a must-read that will haunt you long after it's over, proving that Andrew Joseph White is the reigning king, draping visceral horror in a feral kind of hope." - Jamison Shea

"With surgical precision, The Spirit Bares its Teeth exposes the menace of conformity in society. I devoured every vicious and human sentence. Let Silas Bell tear you apart, then stitch you back together." - Trang Thanh Tran


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