Hunger

Book excerpt: A teenage girl saddles up to take on worldwide famine—and her own anorexia—in a “fast-paced, witty, and heart-breaking” fantasy adventure (Richelle Mead, #1 New York Times-bestselling author) Jackie Morse Kessler’s Riders of the Apocalypse series follows teens who are transformed into the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. In Hunger, Lisabeth Lewis has a black steed, a set of scales, and a new job: she’s been appointed Famine. How will an anorexic seventeen-year-old girl from the suburbs fare as one of the Four Horsemen? Traveling the world on her steed gives Lisa freedom from her troubles at home—her constant battle with hunger, and her struggle to hide it from the people who care about her. But being Famine forces her to go places where hunger is a painful part of everyday life, and to face the horrifying effects of her phenomenal power. Can Lisa find a way to harness that power—and the courage to fight her own inner demons? A wildly original approach to the issue of eating disorders, Hunger is about the struggle to find balance in a world of extremes and uses fantastic tropes to explore a difficult topic that touches the lives of many teens. “A great book . . . funny and sad, brilliant and tragic, and most of all, it speaks the truth. I adore it.”—Rachel Caine, New York Times-bestselling author “It was sheer genius to combine the eating disorder anorexia with the ultimate entity signifying lack of food, nourishment and all that that entails: famine.”—New York Journal of Books “The storytelling is both realistic and compassionate.”—School Library Journal, (starred review)