Emmeline Ward is a conman’s dream. Sheltered, timid, rich beyond words, and the only survivor of the highway robbery that left her parents dead and her brother missing, she is stranded, far from friends, on a distant island that is haunted by the ravenous, devouring Wind that has used people’s desires to strip them bare.

Benjamin Barrow is the consummate conman. A snake oil salesman, to be precise. He is willing to help Emmeline—if she’s willing to pay the price. After all, there are worse things in the world than a liar, and sometimes a liar is just what you need. He has never heard the voice of the strange god that billows across the isle, but he’s grown up surrounded by its skeletons, and he’ll do anything to leave them behind.

Together, they must brave a landscape brimming with the desperate and the damned in order to find Emmeline’s brother. But with the Wind always whispering, the humans always conniving, and reward money on the line, Emmeline and Benjamin must decide whether they can trust each other enough to work together—or lose themselves to their own hunger.

Publication

NA: Simon & Schuster (Books for Young Readers)