Author Description

"<i>Rouge</i> is a fever dream--a brilliant, intense, unforgettable horror story about a beauty cult with a deeply moving mother-daughter story at its core. Mona Awad's signature and singular imagination and black humor and empathy are on full display here, and her wild-ride of a tale is masterfully grounded in the emotional devastation of childhood and grief. I loved every word of this."<br> <b>--Laura Zigman, author of <i>Small World</i></b><br> <br> "There is nobody else like Mona Awad, daring enough to plunge her hands--rings and all--into the viscera of story and discover an unsettling beauty within. ROUGE is her most magnetic work yet, a thrilling dystopian romp that knows that beneath the glossy, aspirational veneer of self-care lurks the same old gothic abyss."<br> <b>--Alexandra Kleeman, author of <i>Something New Under the Sun</i></b><br> <br> "A brilliant, biting critique of western beauty standards as well as a soaring, phantasmagoric, Angela Carter-esque fairy tale about trauma and the loss of self. <i>Rouge</i> is deeply unsettling, funny, obsessive, and unlike anything I've read. A truly mesmerizing read."<br> <b>--Paul Tremblay, author of <i>The Cabin at the End of the World </i>and<i> A Head Full of Ghosts </i></b><br> <br> "Unsettling, whimsical, and moving, <i>Rouge</i> is an authentic, innovative kind of narrative magic that's both surreal and absolute. A striking novel of incandescence and heart."<br> <b>--Iain Reid, author of <i>I'm Thinking of Ending Things</i></b><br> <br> <b>From the critically acclaimed author of Bunny comes a horror-tinted, gothic fairy tale about a lonely dress shop clerk whose mother's unexpected death sends her down a treacherous path in pursuit of youth and beauty. Can she escape her mother's fate--and find a connection that is more than skin deep?</b><br> <br> For as long as she can remember, Belle has been insidiously obsessed with her skin and skincare videos. When her estranged mother Noelle mysteriously dies, Bell