Every year on St Stephen’s Day, Wren Silke is chased through the forest in a warped version of a childhood game. Her pursuers are judges – a group of powerful and frightening boys who know nothing of her true identity. If they knew she was an augur – their sworn enemy – the game would be up.

This year, the tension between judges and augurs is at breaking point. Wren’s survival, and that of her family, depends on her becoming a spy in the midst of these boys she fears most and using her talent, her magic, to steal from them the only thing that can restore her family’s former power for good.

But Wren’s talent comes with a price. The more she uses it, the more she loses her grip on reality and soon she’s questioning everything she’s ever known about her family, about augurs and judges, and about the dangerous tattooed stranger who most definitely is not on her side...

About the author

Mary Watson is from Cape Town and now lives on the West Coast of Ireland with her husband and three young children. Highlights of her adult writing career include being awarded the Caine Prize for African Writing in Oxford in 2006, and being included on the Hay Festival’s 2014 Africa39 list of influential writers from sub Saharan Africa.

The Wren Hunt is published by Bloomsbury and is distributed in South Africa by Jonathan Ball Publishers