Author Description

<p><b><i>A young woman undertakes a terrifying journey—and a terrifying transformation—in this genre-blending speculative suspense novel set in South Korea and the US which mixes fantasy, gothic vibes and queer longing, with a shot of feminist body horror.</i></b><br><br><i>Fairytales are for children. </i><br><i>Until the day we awaken in a place full of monsters, </i><br><i>being softly enveloped by the dark.</i><br><br>Nineteen-year-old undocumented immigrant Hee-Jin lies on the floor of her cramped Seoul apartment, listening for footsteps.<br><br>But the knock on the door isn’t the police finally coming to deport her to North Korea. Instead, sprawled on the doorstep is a disfigured, bird-like corpse—and it has her eyes. Her younger sister, artist Hee-Young, is meant to be on an art program in America, not dead of a strange overdose.<br><br>But in Hee-Young’s pocket is a plane ticket and US passport. Seeing her chance for freedom, Hee-Jin steals her sister’s identity and takes her place, determined to uncover what really happened to her.<br><br>But the deeper she dives into the program’s strange workings, the closer she gets to the monstrous secret at its heart.<br><br><b>A page-turner of a mystery filled with gorgeous, creepy Korean folklore and imagery, <i>Aviary, </i>written by critically acclaimed Korean American author Maria Dong, is also a story about power, violence, exploitation</b><b>—</b><b>and transformation. And, above all, it's about the choices women make from within a system where all the available options are bad ones.</b></p>