'Gripping ... Bravura storytelling' VOGUE
'A blood-soaked, gothic nightmare' FINANCIAL TIMES
From one of our most accomplished storytellers, an extraordinary and arresting novel about a nineteenth-century women's asylum, and a terrifying doctor who wants to change the world.
Humiliated by a procedure gone terribly wrong, Dr Silas Weir is forced to take a position at the New Jersey Asylum for Female Lunatics. There, his work focuses on women who have been neglected by the state – women he subjects to grotesque modes of experimentation.
Based on authentic historical documents, Butcher is a nightmare voyage through the darkest regions of the American psyche.
'A ghastly and harrowing page-turner' STEPHEN KING, via X
'A triumph of style and brio’ FINANCIAL TIMES
'Terrifying' FLAUNT
'Vividly and compellingly-drawn' iNEWS
Joyce Carol Oates is a novelist, critic, playwright, poet and author of short stories and one of America’s most highly respected literary figures. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including We Were the Mulvaneys, which was an Oprah Book Club Choice, and Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton University and a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction.