The Cherry Robbers by Sarai Walker

The Cherry Robbers by Sarai Walker

"Sarai Walker has done it again. With The Cherry Robbers she upends the Gothic ghost story with a fiery feminist zeal." --Maria Semple

The highly anticipated second novel from Sarai Walker, following her "slyly subversive" (EW) cult-hit Dietland--a feminist gothic about the lone survivor of a cursed family of sisters, whose time may finally be up.

IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF THEIR LIVES.

INSTEAD IT WAS THE LAST.

Iris Chapel and her five elegant sisters, all of them heiresses to the Chapel firearms fortune, live cloistered in a lavish Victorian mansion. Neglected by both a distant, workaholic father and a mentally troubled mother--who believes their home is haunted by the victims of Chapel weapons--the sisters have grown up with only each other for company. They long to escape the eerie fairy tale of their childhood and move forward into the modern world, but for young women in 1950s Connecticut, the only way out is through marriage.

Yet it soon becomes clear that for the Chapel sisters, marriage equals death. 

When the eldest sister walks down the aisle, tragedy strikes. The bride dies mysteriously the very next day, leaving her family and the town in shock. But this is just the beginning of a chain of disasters that will make each woman wonder whether true love will kill her, too. Only Iris, the second-youngest, finds a way to escape--but can she outrun the family curse forever?

Sarai Walker, the acclaimed author of the cult-hit novel Dietland, building off the Gothic tradition of Shirley Jackson, brings to life this riveting, deliciously twisted feminist tale, a gorgeous and provocative page-turner about the legacy of male power and the cost of female freedom.

Sarai Walker is the author of the novel Dietland, which has been translated into over a dozen languages and has been made into an AMC television series. She has given lectures on feminism and body image all around the world and has been interviewed extensively on these themes in the media. Her essays and articles have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and others, and she worked on an updated version of Our Bodies, Ourselves as a writer and editor. She graduated from Bennington College with a MFA in creative writing and the University of London with a PhD in English. She currently resides in Philadelphia.