Amidst the devastation of Ireland’s Great Famine, a young woman is salvaged from certain death when offered a mysterious position at a remote manor house haunted by a strange power and the horror of her own memories in this chillingly evocative historical novel braided with gothic horror and supernatural suspense for readers of Katherine Arden’s The Warm Hands of Ghosts and The Silence Factory by Bridget Collins.
Genocide, child death, cannibalism.
County Clare, 1848: In the scant few years since the potato blight first cast its foul shadow over Ireland, Maggie O’Shaughnessy has lost everything—her entire family and the man she trusted with her heart. Toiling in the Ennis Workhouse for paltry rations, she can see no future either within or outside its walls—until the mysterious Lady Catherine arrives to whisk her away to an old mansion in the stark limestone landscape of the Burren.
Lady Catherine wants Maggie to impersonate her late daughter, Wilhelmina, and hoodwink solicitors into releasing Wilhelmina’s widow pension so that Lady Catherine can continue to provide for the villagers in her care. In exchange, Maggie will receive freedom from the workhouse, land of her own, and the one thing she wants more than either: a chance to fulfill the promise she made to her brother on his deathbed—to live to spite them all.
Launching herself into the daunting task, Maggie plays the role of Wilhelmina as best she can while ignoring the villagers’ tales of ghostly figures and curses. But more worrying are the whispers that come from within. Something in Lady Catherine’s house is reawakening long-buried memories in Maggie—of a foe more terrifying than hunger or greed, of a power that calls for blood and vengeance, and of her own role in a nightmare that demands the darkest sacrifice…
Don't just take our word for it...
“This House Will Feed is both a luscious Gothic, as well a poignant examination of the nature of loss and collective memory in a time of unspeakable horrors. I absolutely adored it and look forward to what Tureaud has in store for us next.”
– Hester Fox, author of The Last Heir to Blackwood Library on This House Will Feed
“A gripping, multilayered tale of vengeance set against the backdrop of one of the worst genocides in human history. Tureaud’s lyrical, gritty prose is a well-honed blade as she lays bare the crimes of colonialism with distinctive gothic flare. Folklore, history, and Irish culture intertwine seamlessly, to form a story with profound contemporary relevance. Powerful and unforgettable.”
– Paulette Kennedy, bestselling author of The Witch of Tin Mountain on This House Will Feed
“Masterfully blending well-researched history with Irish folk horror, Tureaud’s striking adult debut is the haunting tale of a young woman’s experience of Ireland’s Great Hunger…The politics prove just as harrowing as the haunting as Tureaud dives deep into Irish/Anglo tensions.”
– Publishers Weekly, starred review 🌟
Taste the very first page
Ennis, Ireland. February 1848
The taste of my brother’s flesh still haunted me.
Eat it, my brother, Michael, had said. Live, Maggie. For one of us had to. Extended in the last breath of impending death, his offer had smarted of desperation and the Devil himself, but God above bore witness that I fought to shake it away and bury it six feet under. ’Twas hard to forget what I’d done, when daily duty led me to the dining hall of the Ennis Workhouse, not a quarter hour past staff mealtime, air heavy with the taunt of stewed meat only the masters could enjoy.
But inmate number 1-3-4-0, of the Ennis Union, had work to do.
An icy draft toyed with the candle flame, shifting the shadows as I forced the brush back and forth over the cool stone floor. The workhouse was my life now—the raw judder of numbed knees, sweat coating my brow as I scoured and scoured. And yet it didn’t seem to matter how hard I worked for the cold had a way of seeping into bones, freezing the very marrow that kindled with a sliver of hope. Of tomorrow. Of the bright, burning dawn.
But hope was for the masters.
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