Author: A.K. BenedictCrime & mysteryPublished on 29 January 2026 by Simon & Schuster Ltd in the United Kingdom.Paperback | 384 pages129 x 198 x 26 | 278g ONCE UPON A TIME LIKE YOU'VE NEVER READ IT BEFORE…DI Lyla Rondell is on the case of a lifetime. Tasked with investigating a series of perplexing deaths, the only lead she has is that each appears to be based on a different classic fairy tale. Far from the stuff of bedtime stories, the press is having a field day with what they have named the Grimm Ripper Murders.But as the bodies stack up, Lyla’s whole world is about to flip on its head. Because the killer’s bloody trail stretches deep into her own origin story, and when she discovers the truth, nothing will ever be the same again.Faced with the fact that everything she knows is fiction, Lyla will have to take a little creative license of her own if she’s going to turn the final page on the killings…'An exquisite puzzle of a crime thriller, it revels in the shadows, as reality is savagely entwined with the very roots of storytelling itself… Prepare to be spellbound because A. K. Benedict is a master of this darkest art’ JANICE HALLETT‘A clever, clever, thoroughly meta, extraordinarily enjoyable modern fairy-tale with layer after layer of intrigue and a breathless pace, I loved it, especially the delicious happy ever after’ ANDREA MARA‘Hugely inventive and mind-bendingly clever’ CLAIRE McGOWAN ‘A fairytale trickster of a book, witty, sly and wickedly clever; it gripped me from first page to last. This is the thriller you'd get if Angela Carter kidnapped Stephen King and made him write with toadstool ink’ KIT WHITFIELD ‘Some passages read like Agatha Christie, some like Angela Carter – but all of it is written with the smoothness and intelligence that is AK Benedict’s signature style. With charm and chills often on the same page, this is a serpentine novel that refuses to give up its secrets until it’s good and ready’ CHARLOTTE BOND
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