Hunger: A Novel

Summary

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of King Sorrow, The Fireman, and NOS4A2 comes a chilling new novel about the battle for a country's survival — and a malevolent, murderous ghost hell-bent on consuming souls.

They’re starving in Boston.

It’s the winter of 1776, and the besieged city is running perilously low on supplies. First the American rebels penned in the British soldiers, then frostbite sank its teeth into the city, and now a ravenous ghost has come to feed on the trapped and desperate colonists who remain loyal to the Crown.

Morale is low enough among the besieged British troops without a fiend tempting men with a sumptuous feast of roast meat, pastries, puddings, and pies. It’s a spread many would sell their souls for…which is exactly the deal on offer.

As the ghoul’s withered victims pile up, and panic spreads, British General Howe takes action: he orders Captain Amos Crowe to expel the fiend by any means necessary.

It is an impossible order. But it’s far from the only impossibility in Crowe’s horrifying New World. For the dead have been speaking to him ever since he was injured at the Battle of Bunker Hill. And now, he must track down a witch hidden deep behind enemy lines, a woman who, it is rumored, holds the key to defeating the evil spirit.

A fast-paced and immersive historical yarn from Joe Hill, master of the supernatural fable, this gripping story weaves its way through the heart of the American Revolution as told through British eyes, capturing the spirit of the age in all its high passion, opportunity, and terror.