The Grace Year

"Emily Shaffer delivers a dynamic performance of this dystopian audiobook.... She masterfully connects listeners to the characters' emotions, creating passionate and realistic performances." (AudioFile Magazine)

This program includes a bonus conversation with the author.

A speculative thriller in the vein of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Power. Optioned by Universal and Elizabeth Banks to be a major motion picture!

Survive the year.

No one speaks of the grace year. It’s forbidden.

In Garner County, girls are told they have the power to lure grown men from their beds, to drive women mad with jealousy. They believe their very skin emits a powerful aphrodisiac, the potent essence of youth, of a girl on the edge of womanhood. That’s why they’re banished for their 16th year, to release their magic into the wild so they can return purified and ready for marriage. But not all of them will make it home alive.

Sixteen-year-old Tierney James dreams of a better life - a society that doesn’t pit friend against friend or woman against woman, but as her own grace year draws near, she quickly realizes that it’s not just the brutal elements they must fear. It’s not even the poachers in the woods, men who are waiting for a chance to grab one of the girls in order to make a fortune on the black market. Their greatest threat may very well be each other.

With sharp prose and gritty realism, The Grace Year examines the complex and sometimes twisted relationships between girls, the women they eventually become, and the difficult decisions they make in-between.

Praise for The Grace Year:

"A visceral, darkly haunting fever dream of a novel and an absolute page-turner." (Libba Bray, New York Times best-selling author)

"The Grace Year seethes with love and brutality, violence and hope. It is a remarkable and timely story of the bonds between women, the cost of breaking those bonds, and the courage it takes to defy a patriarchy intent on crushing feminine strength." (Sabaa Tahir, number one New York Times best-selling author of An Ember in the Ashes)

"This book is harrowing and absolutely riveting, an insidious journey from reason to madness that manages to completely refresh the concept of the patriarchal dystopia, with a beautifully realized ending that goes to a very different, and even more believable, subtle, and unexpectedly satisfying, place than I expected." (Melissa Albert, New York Times best-selling author of The Hazel Wood)