'Amazing' Meg Rosoff 'Extraordinary' Maggie Alderson 'What some might call beauty, I find monstrous' In the age of the Faerie Queene, Elizabeth I, Lord Francis Rodermere starts to lay waste to a forest. Furious, the sorceress who dwells there scrawls a curse into the bark of the first oak he fells: A faerie boy will be born to you whose beauty will be your death. Ten years later, Lord Rodermere's son, Beau is born – and all who encounter him are struck by his great beauty. Meanwhile, many miles away in a London alchemist's cellar lives Randa – a beast deemed too monstrous to see the light of day. And so begins a timeless tale of love, tragedy and revenge... A stunning retelling of Beauty and the Beast