The Children

Melissa Albert’s first novel for adults, The Children (2026), is a psychological and supernatural horror story that deconstructs the legacy of a beloved children’s author. Albert is the New York Times best-selling author of several young-adult dark-fantasy novels, including the series The Hazel Wood. The Children follows Guinevere “Guin” Sharpe, the adult daughter of the late, celebrated author Edith Sharpe. Guin has built her life around managing her mother’s legacy, centered on the famous Ninth City book series that features protagonists based on Guin and her estranged brother, Ennis. When Ennis, now a famous artist, announces a provocative new installation titled Mother, Guin’s carefully curated, idyllic version of her past begins to unravel, forcing her to confront the dark secrets of her family’s life at their isolated Vermont home.

The novel explores the deep and lasting effects of a childhood spent in the shadow of a parent’s immense fame. A central theme is The Harm Caused by Parental Exploitation, which examines how the monetization of children’s lives for artistic gain can inflict deep psychological trauma. The story critiques the romanticization of artistic creation, reframing it as a monstrous and parasitic force due to The Difficulty of Distinguishing Between Exploitation and Inspiration in Art. As Guin dives deeper into the mysteries of her family, the narrative structure, which interweaves present-day events with fragmented flashbacks, highlights The Impact of Trauma on Memory, contrasting a publicly performed, sanitized story with terrifying, suppressed truths.

This guide refers to the 2026 William Morrow first edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of death, death by suicide, graphic violence, child abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, mental illness, substance use, sexual content, and cursing.

Plot Summary

Guinevere “Guin” Sharpe lives as the public steward of her late mother’s legacy. Her mother, Edith Sharpe, was the celebrated author of the beloved Ninth City children’s book series, which features protagonists named for and based on Guin and her estranged brother, Ennis Sharpe. As Guin promotes her new, sanitized memoir, Ninth City Dreamer, she’s blindsided during a live television interview with the news that Ennis, now a famous installation artist, is opening a show titled Mother. The announcement, coming just a week after her memoir’s release, causes Guin to have a small public crisis, raising questions about the idyllic childhood her book portrays. The incident puts her at odds with her publisher, Hart & Crane, and her publicity head, Regina Coleman. The stress also strains her relationship with her fiancé, Hank, a kind schoolteacher who worries about her secrecy. Guin is then visited by Candace “Candy” Street, Ennis’s longtime assistant, who warns her that Ennis is acting erratically and that she’s concerned about the Mother show. Candy urges Guin to talk to him, but Guin refuses, still wounded by their long estrangement.

The present-day conflict is interwoven with flashbacks to the Sharpe family’s life at the “Farmhouse,” a remote home in Vermont. Guin and Ennis’s father Llewellyn Sharpe’s acting career implodes following his affair with the teenage Edith, and the family moves to the isolated house. While Llewellyn sinks into a mysterious, depressive illness and warns of recurring bad dreams about the house, Edith begins writing obsessively in a locked third-floor room. Her work culminates in The Ninth City, a book that brings immense fame and turns the Farmhouse into a salon for artists and admirers. This period is marked by strange occurrences, including the day Edith appears with her ring finger mysteriously gone, an event she’s preternaturally calm about. Visitors who stay at the Farmhouse, like the vivid painter Anne Read and the talented young writer Arthur Borelli, tend to have their creative spark drained before disappearing abruptly. The children, Guin and Ennis, are left to their own devices, forming a “two-person cult” in the woods and building a secret playhouse (193), all while navigating the unsettling and boundary-less world of their parents. Their bond is tested when Edith reveals that she has used their names and likenesses for her books, turning them into public property. Ennis is furious, but Guin, secretly reading the books, feels a complex mix of betrayal and fascination.

In the present, Guin’s life continues to unravel. She agrees to meet with Nisha Dey, a friend of Marla Kaufman, a young woman who died at Ennis’s previous installation, The Door Museum. During their conversation, Guin speculates that Ennis’s art might be “to blame” for the tragedy. Nisha secretly records their talk and posts a heavily edited version to TikTok, creating a viral scandal. The video fuels conspiracy theories about the Sharpe family and leads Hart & Crane to “bench” Guin from all publicity for her memoir. Her relationship with Hank deteriorates further when he discovers her habit of writing stories in secret on a typewriter and then burning the pages. After a painful argument, he leaves her. Guin also discovers that Ennis has been secretly entering her apartment for years, leaving behind a carved wooden hand from their childhood and altering her memoir’s cover so that the subtitle reads, “A Fairy Tale” (187). Following a tip from Candy, Guin connects with Arlene Fitzpatrick, Ennis’s ex-girlfriend, who recounts hearing a mysterious voice that sounded like Edith’s at one of his installations. She also describes a strange necklace with a charm like a curled-up finger that Ennis never took off.

On the night of the opening, Guin goes to the factory in Brooklyn where Mother is being held. The ground floor is a decadent party where masked waiters who uncannily resemble Llewellyn serve champagne that seems to induce a hedonistic stupor in the guests. The walls are covered in massive paintings that transform the woods and memories of their childhood into a fairy-tale landscape, including details that Ennis shouldn’t know. Guin finds a stairwell, where another Llewellyn-like figure ushers her upstairs, saying, “Go find your brother” (313). The second floor is a haunting, life-sized re-creation of the Dreamers’ Graveyard, a location from the Ninth City books where dead dreams go. Here, Ennis has built replicas of significant places from their past, including their father’s studio, Anne Read’s studio, and the local cinema they frequented. At the end of the Graveyard, Guin finds a door to a perfect reconstruction of Edith’s writing room. Inside, she solves a puzzle involving the desk’s many hand-shaped drawers, which contain objects that are keys to the Ninth City. The final drawer holds Ennis’s necklace charm, which unfurls into a tiny golden ring finger. Guin realizes that it’s a key and uses it to open a secret door in the wall.

The door opens into a magical, twilit version of the Farmhouse woods. Guin follows a path constructed from her own childhood stories to their playhouse, where Ennis is waiting. He explains that Mother is an ancient supernatural entity who was bound to the Farmhouse generations earlier and can take the creative “light” of one person and give it to another. Edith encountered Mother and used this power to fuel her own creative success, draining Llewellyn and other talented people who passed through the Farmhouse. Edith’s lost finger was her sacrifice to create a key to Mother’s hidden room. When Ennis became convinced that Edith would eventually sacrifice Guin to complete the sixth book, he intervened. He made his own pact with Mother, sacrificing his own finger for a key. Believing that Mother’s power was tied to the house, Ennis set the fire that killed their parents and their guests, believing that destroying the house would keep Mother from reaching Guin. Instead, Mother manipulated him into destroying the place where she had been bound, freeing her and binding her to Ennis. His art installations have become her new feeding grounds, where she takes “tithes” of creative energy from attendees—which is what led to Marla Kaufman’s death. He reveals that his plan is to use the Mother show to open thousands of doors at once, giving Mother a vast garden to feed on and leaving them free to live in her country. He asks Guin to join him. Seeing a path to reclaim her own stolen artistic identity, Guin agrees. Mother appears, wearing Edith’s face, and painlessly takes Guin’s finger, forging a new key and sealing their new family.

Some time later, Guin and Ennis, now a formidable and united pair, walk into the offices of Hart & Crane. They have fired Regina and hired their own publicist, Fern. They seize control of a meeting with the publisher, Benjamin Crane, to announce that they will be writing and illustrating the sixth and final Ninth City book, The Architect’s Key. An excerpt from the book reveals their ultimate plan: to usurp the Architect—the series’ mysterious creator figure, who was Edith’s literary counterpart—and take the Ninth City for themselves. The release will be a grand offering to Mother, with the first 10,000 copies containing a hand-drawn sketch by Ennis, creating thousands of new doors. Their message to the world is a chilling promise disguised as a gift: “With the release of The Architect’s Key, we hope to pay back all you have done for us” (391).