'For readers seeking a book that will shake them, Queen Mab casts its eerie spell slowly, steadily deepening a spiral of misgivings and dread and changelings, until they are entirely entranced' Doireann Ní Ghríofa, author of Said the Dead

A changeling child. A mother away with the fairies.

Madeleine is in her early twenties when she conceives on the night of a full moon. Having the baby will mean putting her doctoral studies on hold. Yet from the first flutter of new life, she feels its lure.

Then baby Maud arrives, sweet and tiny, worth every moment of a difficult labour. But when she is returned to Madeleine's arms, something feels wrong. The child won't stop crying. Her eyes glint with an ancient cunning. Could she be an imposter, switched while Madeleine wasn't watching?

Meanwhile, the world carries on. Buses rumble through the city. Baristas steam milk. Alone in the crowd, Madeleine searches for a way to rid herself of this ravenous creature. On her walks with the pram, voices heckle from the hedgerows and mists unfurl across the pavement, beckoning her towards fairyland.

Full of lingering magic and riveting menace, Queen Mab is the story of the most elemental forms of transformation, and one woman's path back to herself.

'Smart, unsettling and tender' Claudia Durastanti, author Strangers I Know

'Perfectly captures those psychedelic, feral postpartum days' Madeleine Watts, Elegy, Southwest

'Darkly funny and devastating' Rebecca Sarah Ley, author of Bad Fiction

'Brave and powerful' Samantha Hunt, author of The Dark Dark

'Strange and bold. It takes no prisoners' Claire Oshetsky, author of Chouette

'A spellbinding account of early motherhood' Lana Bastašic, author of Catch the Rabbit

"The body horror of birth gives way to the fairy-tale horror of early motherhood, which McBride, a translator based in Barcelona, strews with literary Easter eggs from folktales and Victorian poetry. . . An agile, unsettling novel about the unwinding of a mind" - The New Yorker

"A haunting exploration of motherhood, madness and the myths we rely on to make sense of our own reality" - Service95

"A young woman's travels to and through the lands of motherhood and mental illness are chronicled with brutal clarity in McBride's debut novel. . . A harrowing tale of mothering and myth" - Kirkus Reviews

"A literature scholar attempts to cope with her postpartum depression by diving into a fantasy world in this artful debut from McBride. . . Seamlessly weaves fantasy into the increasingly suspenseful narrative, which builds to a powerful crescendo" - Publishers Weekly

"'There's magic-or madness-in McBride's debut, much as in stories of Queen Mab, but there's also a visceral and real sense of the characters' daily lives. . . McBride establishes herself as someone ready to write (and be read) alongside authors of Helen Oyeyemi's skill with this powerful exploration of the poetics and politics of motherhood'" - Library Journal

"I read Queen Mab with the same uneasy thrill I'd felt staring at my first sonogram. I didn't want to know whether Maddie's fixations, that her perfect baby had been stolen by the bad kind of fairies and replaced by a ne'er-do-well changeling, were real or imagined - I wanted that ambivalence, a reminder of all that unease" - The Cut

"Marrying literary drama and folk horror to depict the madness of new motherhood and the transformation that is pregnancy, this dreamy, haunting journey is the must-read arrival of a potent new voice in fiction. . . Whether you come for the fairy lore or the boundless drama of life with a new baby, Queen Mab is a gripping debut" - BookPage