A young woman is seduced by the glamour of the circus and drawn into a dangerous world of violence, cruelty and revenge. For readers of Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus and Helen Oyeyemi's Mr Fox.
A dark fantasy tale infused with mystery and threat from the award-winning author whose work has been described by Paul Tremblay as “intelligent, dark, wildly inventive".

Sara Sidorova lies dying. As she hovers between life and death, she receives a visitation from Amba, the tiger god who will devour creation if he is released from the chains that bind him. Amba gives Sara Sidorova an extraordinary gift: a glimpse into the future.

Years later, her granddaughter Irenda will grow up in a wartorn country where survival means obedience. When a devastating attack robs her of her mother, she travels to Hrana City. There, her grandmother agrees to teach her the ultimate secret: how to tame death. But it won’t be easy…

In the circus that offers her first taste of power, Irenda will have to tame another tiger if she is to survive. Amongst the magicians, the strongmen and the contortionists, she will start down a dangerous road, to carry out a revenge decades in the making... and bring justice into the world for herself and for her family.

Rich with glamour and strangeness, brutality and deceit and the dark magic of the circus, this haunting fable will chill your bones and make your heart ache.

Helen Marshall's profile page

HELEN MARSHALL is the World Fantasy Award-winning author of two short story collections and two poetry chapbooks. Her stories and poetry have appeared in magazines and anthologies including Abyss & Apex, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet and Tor.com. She obtained a PhD from the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, and then spent two years completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Oxford investigating literature written during the time of the Black Death. Helen has worked as a managing editor for ChiZine Publications, and was recently hired as a permanent Lecturer in Creative Writing and Publishing at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. She grew up in Sarnia, Ontario, and now resides in Cambridge.

Praise for Helen Marshall:

“Stories subtle and unsettling: Helen Marshall clothes the uncanny in new flesh and then makes it bleed.”
Kelly Link, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Pretty Monsters

“Intelligent, dark, wildly inventive, The Migration does more than put a new twist on the apocalyptic outbreak novel. It dares to be full of heart and full of difficult, defiant hope.”
Paul Tremblay, author of Horror Movie

"Helen Marshall whispers in your ear when she fits the noose around your neck, filling you with wonder and dread, urging you into a startling, beautiful darkness. These stories — which sometimes feel more like spells—are the very best kind of unsettling."
Benjamin Percy, author of Red Moon and The Wilding

"A dark fable that somehow feels both timeless and urgently topical. The Migration is heart-wringing and powerful, but over and above that, it's just vivid and immersive and enthralling throughout."
M.R. Carey, author of The Girl with All the Gifts

"A moving study of love, family bonds, climate change and personal transformation... Spectres of climate change and the plague haunt the novel, but what in lesser hands might have been a gloom-laden read is transformed by the author’s quiet optimism.”
The Guardian

“It’s a thoughtful novel that places the love between two sisters at the center, and builds around it an intense sci-fi tale of disease and evolution. . . . Marshall skillfully builds a world only a step away from our own, delving into the parallels with previous periods of worldwide disease and chaos, and conjuring an all-too-realistic near future with a light touch.”
SFX Magazine

“A tour de force of imagination, this remarkable debut collection uses the conventions of dark fantasy and horror as the framework for some of speculative fiction’s most unusual stories. VERDICT Fans of experimental fiction and exceptional writing should find a wealth of enjoyment here.”
Library Journal, Starred Review