The Butcher's Daughter
The hitherto untold story of Mrs. Lovett
May 2025
The story of the vengeful barber Sweeney Todd has gripped fans across literary, stage, and screen renditions—but little has been told of Mrs. Lovett, Todd’s partner in crime. Until now.
Enclosed herewith: a bloodcurdling correspondence of horror and intrigue, based on the original Victorian penny dreadful that started it all.
London, 1887: At the abandoned apartment of a missing young woman, a dossier of evidence is collected, ordered chronologically, and sent to the Chief Inspector of the London Metropolitan Police. It contains a frightening correspondence between an inquisitive journalist, Miss Emily Gibson, and the woman Gibson thinks may be the infamous Mrs. Lovett—Sweeney Todd’s accomplice, “a wicked woman” who baked men into pies and sold them in her pie shop on Fleet Street. The talk of London Town—even decades after her horrendous misdeeds. As the woman relays the harrowing account of her life—from her upbringing on Butcher’s Row in the unruly streets of Victorian London to her daring escape from a mad doctor—her missives unlock an intricate mystery that brings Miss Gibson closer to the truth, even as that truth may cost her everything.
A hair-raising and breathtaking novel for fans of Sarah Waters and Gregory Maguire, The Butcher’s Daughter is an irresistible literary thriller that draws richly from historical sources and shines new light on the woman behind the counter of the most disreputable pie shop ever known.
“Your fingers may bleed with paper cuts as you tear through The Butcher’s Daughter. Retailed with consummate confidence, this novel draws out of the foggy demimonde of Victorian London all manner of mayhem. I am spellbound. You will be too, should you attend the tale.”
—Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
“Grisly, spellbinding, and oddly touching . . . Demchuk and Clark get their arms bloody to the elbow reaching deep into the carcass of a story about life at the margins and the gruesome allure of wanton violence.”
—Gretchen Felker-Martin, author of Manhunt and Cuckoo
“Engrossing and exquisitely detailed. A twisty tale worthy of the enigmatic Mrs. Lovett.”
—Kelley Armstrong, New York Times bestselling author of Bitten and I’ll Be Waiting
“A Victorian nightmare. Demchuk and Clark present an assembly of communications and reports that together form temporal windows to a slaughterhouse, turning us into voyeurs glimpsing the edges of carnage. All the ingredients of a macabre treat.”
—Hailey Piper, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Queen of Teeth and All the Hearts You Eat
”Gorgeous and gory, The Butcher’s Daughter is utterly immersive and plays with readers’ expectations from the first page to the last. Every page is an invitation, to investigate, to participate, to let down your guard.”
—Kate Heartfield, author of The Embroidered Book and The Chatelaine
“A consistently clever and harrowing fin-de-siècle horror, The Butcher’s Daughter draws its eerie narrative harmonies from a cacophony of documents. Demchuk and Clark are equally adept in blending genres, creating a unique mixture of sensation fiction and literary horror. Tremendous fun.”
—Naben Ruthnum, author of Helpmeet
”Gorgeous and gory, The Butcher’s Daughter is utterly immersive and plays with readers’ expectations from the first page to the last. Every page is an invitation, to investigate, to participate, to let down your guard.”
—Kate Heartfield, author of The Embroidered Book and The Chatelaine
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“A wonderfully sophisticated horror. The Butcher’s Daughter is a gloomy, disgusting, and suspenseful rollercoaster ride, brought to vivid life by two exceptionally talented writers. At its heart, it is a tale about bodies—especially women’s bodies—about freedom and agency, and those who wish to control other human beings down to their guts. An historical novel, yes, but very much spun from this current bloody moment. Bleak, witty, and disturbing.”
—Richard Mirabella, author of Brother & Sister Enter the Forest
“Bloody and beautiful, The Butcher’s Daughter is a visceral novel that grips the reader and refuses to let go. David Demchuk and Corinne Leigh Clark brilliantly reimagine a classic, giving it new depths, new horrors, and new layers to peel back by centering the character of Mrs. Lovett and rightfully letting her tell her own tale in her own voice. The moment I started reading, I didn’t want to put it down.”
—A. C. Wise, author of Wendy, Darling
“The seedy underbelly of Victorian London comes to life in this deliciously dark novel, with mad scientists, murderous cults, merciless madams, and, of course, meat pies. If Sarah Waters had written penny dreadfuls, it might look something like this, but only David Demchuk and Corinne Leigh Clark could make me hungry while reading about cannibalism.”
—Nino Cipri, author of Dead Girls Don’t Dream
