THE LISTENERS

Since the publication of Shiver in 2009, Maggie has been one of the industry's most loved and respected young adult novelists with several #1 New York Times bestsellers to her credit. Her first novel for adult readers, The Listeners, features all of her signature strengths: great storytelling, beautiful prose, compelling characters, authenticity of place, and a bit of magic. It also happens to be based on real events that occurred during WWII.

It's January 1942 and The Avallon Hotel & Spa is the place for high society to see and be seen. Located deep in the West Virginia mountains, the hotel, owned by the distinguished Gilfoyle family, has an unlikely manager, June Hudson. Not only is she a local, unheard of for a hotel of such scope, but she also began there as a cleaner. No one knows why she was suddenly promoted to manager a decade ago . . . but everyone can agree that she's taken a legend and made it even greater. Keeping the Avallon running smoothly is a far more challenging game than most know. The hotel's reputation was built on the healing properties of the mineral springs, but the eerie sweetwater that fills the bathhouses and flows from its fountains can also be dangerous. The most important rule of the game is this: keep the hotel peaceful. When war is declared, June tries desperately to shield the Avallon from it, but it's for naught when E.D. Gilfoyle makes a deal with the State Department to house dozens of Axis diplomats, engineers, businessmen and journalists at the hotel. The goal is reciprocity; the detainees are meant to live in absolute luxury in the hope that Allied VIPs trapped overseas receive the same care. June must convince her staffmany of whom have sons and husbands heading to battleto feed Nazis caviar for the war effort. Peacefully. Another factor threatens the Avallon's careful tranquility: an FBI agent, Tucker Minnick, is searching for a spy among the detainees. Although he has not returned to West Virginia in years, he has his own history with the sweetwater. He would have done anything to avoid returning to those mountains, to those springs, but this mission is an exile that he deserves and won't escape unless he earns it. He doesn't expect to have a change of heart about the hotel. He also doesn't expect to fall in love. As tension grows between locals and the detainees and Tucker's spy games disturb the peace at the Avallon, June starts to lose control. She spent her adolescence tangled up with the Gilfoyle family, and thought she'd made her peace with them, but the hurt and broken promises are bubbling to the surface. Her future with the Avallon relies on her keeping things tranquil at all costs. That's beginning to look like too dear a price. But who is she without the hotel? And what is it without her? Maggie Stiefvater is the New York Times bestselling author of the Shiver trilogy, The Raven Cycle, and The Scorpio Races, among dozens of other YA fantasy novels. Her books have sold over five million copies around the world. She lives in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia with her husband and their two children.