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From the nationally bestselling author of The Luminous Dead and The Death of Jane Lawrence, a transfixing fever dream of medieval horror following three women in a besieged castle that descends ravenously into madness under the spell of mysterious, godlike visitors.

Aymar Castle has been under siege for six months. Food is running low and there has been no sign of rescue. But just as the survivors consider deliberately thinning their number, the castle stores are replenished. The sick are healed. And the divine figures of the Constant Lady and her Saints have arrived, despite the barricaded gates, offering succor in return for adoration.

Soon, the entire castle is under the sway of their saviors, partaking in intoxicating feasts of terrible origin. The war hero Ser Voyne gives her allegiance to the Constant Lady. Phosyne, a disorganized, paranoid nun-turned-sorceress, races to unravel the mystery of these new visitors and exonerate her experiments as their source. And in the bowels of the castle, a serving girl, Treila, is torn between her thirst for a secret vengeance against Voyne and the desperate need to escape from the horrors that are unfolding within Aymar’s walls.

As the castle descends into bacchanalian madness—forgetting the massed army beyond its walls in favor of hedonistic ecstasy—these three women are the only ones to still see their situation for what it is. But they are not immune from the temptations of the castle’s new masters… or each other; and their shifting alliances and entangled pasts bring violence to the surface. To save the castle, and themselves, will take a reimagining of who they are, and a reorganization of the very world itself.

Don't just take our word for it...

“The Starving Saints is a rich, strange, deeply medieval novel that left me astonished and delighted. Starling expertly dismantles our expectations in this perfectly rendered puzzle box of a world. I would follow these women anywhere, which would probably not end well for me.”
– Kate Heartfield, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Embroidered Book  

“As brilliant as it is bizarre. From the very first page you know you are in the hands of an author at the height of their abilities. Truly one of the most inventive, audacious, immersive novels I’ve ever read. Grips you like the cold sweat of a fever and doesn’t let you go until the final moment of dizzying, gut-shot revelation. This is the unhinged cannibal book of my dreams—and my nightmares.”
– Ava Reid, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Study in Drowning

“This fantastical story is transfixing on its own, but it also serves to underscore that humanity’s obsession with power may be the biggest horror of all. . . . A brilliantly constructed and thoroughly unnerving fever dream that Starling’s fans will gulp down.”
– Library Journal (starred review 🌟)

Taste the very first page

In fifteen days, there will be no food in Aymar Castle. She has done the arithmetic forward and back. They have been down to strangled rations for weeks now, and there have been mistakes. Thefts. Impulsive, desperate gorgings. Even if every soul in Aymar Castle keeps to their allotted portion—and Phosyne does not think that is likely—every soul in Aymar Castle will run out of food in fifteen days.

And though Phosyne is one of the few outside the Priory who can work sums, everybody else is bound to realize this soon.

They are packed in one atop the other; a castle meant to hold at most three hundred for any length of time now shelters three times that. Every nook and cranny is full to bursting of terrified farmers and a pitiful handful of overwrought knights. They’ve been living in this unbearable press for almost six months now. It’s a testament to Ser Leodegardis’s leadership that they’ve lasted this long, that the siege outside their walls has not broken them, that plague has not crashed down heavy on their heads. But time is inexorable, as is the human stomach.

Relief has not come. They do not know if it will.

Fifteen days.

Phosyne counts out her own stores, meant to last her another three. She doesn’t eat much, so they might last her a little longer, except she has two little mouths to feed that the quartermaster doesn’t know about. Her companions slink along the walls and ceiling, all long, sleek bodies and dark scales, looking for a crevice to slip through. Ornuo stole a chicken a month and a half ago, but Phosyne has since stopped up her few windows. No chance of that happening…

June 2025