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Author: Oates, Joyce Carol

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Published on 22 May 2025 by HarperCollins Publishers (Fourth Estate Ltd) in the United Kingdom.

Paperback | 352 pages
129 x 198 x 23 | 238g

‘Simply the most consistently inventive, brilliant, curious and creative writer going’ GILLIAN FLYNN

‘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Based on authentic historical documents, Butcher is a nightmare voyage through the darkest regions of the American psyche.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