{"id":106906,"date":"2019-02-07T10:00:02","date_gmt":"2019-02-07T10:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=106906"},"modified":"2019-02-06T16:09:40","modified_gmt":"2019-02-06T16:09:40","slug":"the-girl-in-red-by-christina-henry-exclusive-book-cover-reveal-and-excerpt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/books\/the-girl-in-red-by-christina-henry-exclusive-book-cover-reveal-and-excerpt\/","title":{"rendered":"The Girl in Red by Christina Henry exclusive book cover reveal and excerpt"},"content":{"rendered":"

Christian Henry’s upcoming novel\u00a0The Girl In Red<\/strong><\/em> hits the shelves on\u00a018 June<\/strong>, and we have an exclusive look at its cover, as well as an excerpt from the book.<\/p>\n

A post-apocalyptic adventure inspired by the classic story of Red Riding Hood,\u00a0The Girl In Red<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0is a tale fans of her\u00a0Alice<\/i><\/strong>\u00a0chronicles and\u00a0Lost Boy<\/i><\/strong>\u00a0are sure to love.<\/p>\n

\n
It’s not safe for anyone alone in the woods. There are predators that come out at night: critters and coyotes, snakes and wolves. But the woman in the red jacket has no choice. Not since the Crisis came, decimated the population, and sent those who survived fleeing into quarantine camps that serve as breeding grounds for death, destruction, and disease. She is just a woman trying not to get killed in a world that doesn’t look anything like the one she grew up in, the one that was perfectly sane and normal and boring until three months ago.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
There are worse threats in the woods than the things that stalk their prey at night. Sometimes, there are men. Men with dark desires, weak wills, and evil intents. Men in uniform with classified information, deadly secrets, and unforgiving orders. And sometimes, just sometimes, there’s something worse than all of the horrible people and vicious beasts combined.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Here’s an exclusive excerpt from the book:<\/p>\n

She hadn\u2019t asked the coyote to sit down and join her, and it was clear he didn\u2019t know what to do with himself. Red could see the shape of what he figured would happen on his face.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

He\u2019d thought she would be polite, that she would offer to share her space with him. He\u2019d thought she would trust him, because she was alone and he was alone and of course people were pack animals and would naturally want to herd together. Then when her guard was down or maybe when she\u2019d fallen asleep, he\u2019d take what he wanted from her and leave. She was not following his script, and he didn\u2019t know how to improvise.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Well, Red\u2019s mother hadn\u2019t raised a fool, and she wasn\u2019t about to invite a coyote to sit down to dinner with her. She stirred the stew over the fire and determined that it was finished heating.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThat smells good,\u201d he said hopefully.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cSure does,\u201d Red replied. She pulled the pot off the fire and poured some of the stew into her camp bowl.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t eaten a darn thing since yesterday,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Red moved the bowl into her lap and spooned a tiny bit of stew, just a mouse bite, into her mouth. It was too soon to eat it and hot, far too hot, and it scorched her tongue. She wasn\u2019t going to be able to taste anything for a couple of hours after that, but she didn\u2019t show it. She only looked at him, and waited for whatever it was that he was going to do.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

He narrowed his eyes then, and she glimpsed the predator he\u2019d tried to disguise under a charm mask.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhere I come from it\u2019s polite to share if you\u2019ve got food and someone else doesn\u2019t,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t say.\u201d <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

She spooned up some more stew, never taking her eyes from him. She was going to lose what was in the pot in a minute when he charged at her, and she was sorry for it, for she was hungry and it wasn\u2019t easy to carry those cans of stew around. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

He pulled out the gun then, the one he\u2019d been pretending not to finger the whole time. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cGive me what\u2019s in your bag, bitch,\u201d he snarled, his lips pulling back from his teeth.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Red calmly put the bowl in her lap to one side. \u201cNo.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cGive it to me or I\u2019ll shoot you,\u201d he said, waving the gun in her general direction.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

He thought he was being menacing, and it made her snort. He looked like a cartoon villain in a movie, a mangy excuse for a badass\u2014the kind that threaten the hero when he walks through an alley and get thrashed for their trouble. She wasn\u2019t dumb enough to think that he couldn\u2019t hurt her, though. Even an idiot with a gun was dangerous.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cAre you laughing at me?\u201d His face twisted in fury as he stepped closer.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

He was coming around the side where she\u2019d rested the pot, as she\u2019d expected. He was afraid of the axe, though he didn\u2019t want to acknowledge it, so he was giving the bloodied blade a wide berth. That was fine by Red.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter, bitch? Scared?\u201d he cooed. He mistook her silence for fear, apparently.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

She waited, patient as a fisherman on a summer\u2019s day, until he was within arm\u2019s length. Then she grabbed the pot handle and stood as fast as she could, using her real leg and her free arm for force to push upward and tapping her other leg down only for balance once she was on her feet.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

The trouble with the prosthetic was that it didn\u2019t spring\u2014Red didn\u2019t have a fancy blade that could perform feats of athleticism\u2014but she\u2019d figured out how to compensate using her other leg. She needed to prevent the coyote from killing her for her food.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Her sudden movement arrested him, his gaze flying to the axe that he\u2019d expected her to grab. Red could have, she supposed, stayed right where she was on the ground and embedded the blade in his thigh, but that might have resulted in a protracted struggle and she didn\u2019t want a struggle.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

The goal was not to have a fancy movie fistfight that looked good from every angle. She wanted him down. She wanted him done. She wanted him unable to grab her.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Red flung the rest of the boiling stew in his face. The intruder screamed, dropped his gun, and clawed at his skin. It blistered and bubbled, and she noticed she\u2019d managed to hit one of his eyes. She didn\u2019t want to think about how horrible that felt because it looked like something awful. Red forced down the gorge that threatened at the smell of his burning flesh. She grabbed up the axe then and swung it into his stomach.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

All the soft organs under his shirt gave away\u2014she felt them squishing beneath the pressure of the blade, and hot blood spurted over her hands and then there was an even worse smell: the smell of what was supposed to be inside your body coming out, and she did cough then, felt the little mouse bite of her dinner coming back up mixed in with bile.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

It stopped her throat and made her whole body heave. But Red wasn\u2019t about to let him get up again and come after her and so she pulled the axe straight across his torso before yanking it out. It made a squelching, sucking sound as it emerged. Red wasn\u2019t accustomed to that sound yet. No matter how many times she used the axe it made her skin crawl. The man (for that was all he was after all, just a man, not a coyote, not a hunter) fell toward her and she backed away as quick as she could, no fancy acrobatics involved. Red was not some movie superhero any more than the man was a movie villain. She was just a woman trying not to get killed in a world that didn\u2019t look anything like the one she\u2019d grown up in, the one that had been perfectly sane and normal and boring until three months ago.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

The man fell to the ground, and the blood seeped from the wound in his stomach. He didn\u2019t make any noise or twitch or anything dramatic like that, because he\u2019d likely passed out once his brain was overwhelmed by the pain from\u00a0<\/span><\/em>his burn and the pain from the axe. <\/span><\/em>He might live\u2014unlikely<\/span>, Red thought, but he might. He might die, and she was sorry not that she\u2019d done it but that she had to do it.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Red didn\u2019t like to think of herself as a killer, but she wasn\u2019t about to let herself get eaten up just because she was a woman alone in the woods.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

The Girl in Red<\/i>\u00a0is out 18 June 2019 in paperback from Titan Books. Get all the latest fantasy news with every issue of SciFiNow.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Get a look at the cover of Christina Henry’s The Girl In Red, and read an exclusive excerpt from the book<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":106907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Uncategorized","MSN_Publish_Option":false,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[1624,1718],"tags":[6392],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/The-Girl-in-the-Red.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106906"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}