Excerpt from The Book That Wouldn't Burn by Mark Lawrence, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Stranger!" Livira let the bucket fall and charged back through the bean rows, shouting her news, Katrin hard on her heels, eating dust. "Stranger!" She raced along the rows, rattling the drying beans in their pods. Only this morning she'd been watching the old men play stones and hollows, dreaming of an escape to something more, to a world that lay beyond the haze. Now that world was coming to her. "Stranger!"

"What are you saying?" Aunt Teela caught Livira's arm in a steel grip as she emerged from the crop.

"A stranger! Someone's coming!" Livira repeated at a lower, more comprehensible volume.

Teela's face stiffened as if a deadwasp had stung her. Her hand fell to her side. "Tell everyone."

Livira ran on, shouting. Something in her aunt's expression had put a chill into her and now fear edged her cries. The summoning bell took up the alarm.


"What do they want?" Livira stood with the others out by the well. Everyone she knew was there, except those few too old, too sick, or too small to emerge from their huts. Aunt Teela held her hand in a painful grip. Livira waited, still sweating from her run. The sun seemed brighter, the dust sharper on her lungs.

"You stay close to me, Livy. Do as you're told for once in your life." Her aunt pulled Livira's face around to hers, meeting her gaze with over-bright eyes. "I love you, child." Aunt Teela was not a woman given to displays of affection and this one filled Livira with a fear far greater than any that Acmar's approaching fist had instilled.

Excerpted from The Book That Wouldn't Burn by Mark Lawrence. Copyright © 2023 by Mark Lawrence. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.