By CARRIE RYAN

09 April 2009, Gollancz, $29.99 original paperback

Surrounded by death one girl must learn what it is to live. The debut of the year: moving, scary, stunning.

In Mary's world there are simple truths. The Sisterhood always knows best. The Guardians will protect and serve. The Unconsecrated will never relent. And you must always mind the fence that surrounds the village; the fence that protects the village from the Forest of Hands and Teeth.

But, slowly, Mary's truths are failing her. She's learning things she never wanted to know about the Sisterhood and its secrets, and the Guardians and their power, and about the Unconsecrated and their relentlessness. When the fence is breached and her world is thrown into chaos, she must choose between her village and her future-between the one she loves and the one who loves her. And she must face the truth about the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Could there be life outside a world surrounded in so much death?

The Forest of Hands and Teeth is an unputdownable page-turner. Carrie Ryan has taken zombies and totally reinvigorated the genre. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, in a seemingly utopian village, it is like The Crucible, meets Twilight, meets Zombie flicks... The Forest of Hands and Teeth is bleak, intelligent, dark, riveting and beautifully crafted, and elegantly written from title to last line.

Carrie Ryan was born and raised in Greenville, South Carolina, and is a graduate of Williams College and Duke University Law School. The Forest of Hands and Teeth is her first novel. A former litigator, she now writes fulltime. She lives with her writer/lawyer fiancé, two fat cats and one large puppy in Charlotte, North Carolina. They are not at all prepared for the zombie apocalypse.