So she set out into the forest in the direction of the sound, to see if she could help. But this girl didn’t like to think of any creature suffering. There were leopards in the forest, and jackals, and brown bears. It sounded like an animal crying out in pain.

It was a good day for mushrooms, and the girl had nearly filled her basket with lion’s mane and hen-of-the-woods when she heard a sound away off in the trees. The ground was soft and damp, and the air smelled of loam and moss.

ExcerptĬhapter One: The Girl Who Saved a Unicorn | CHAPTER ONE | THE GIRL WHO SAVED A UNICORNĪ long time ago, in that forest that lies between the Alborz Mountains and the Caspian Sea, a girl went foraging for mushrooms. The deeper Marjan gets into treating these animals, the closer she comes to finding who killed her father-and to a shocking truth that will reawaken her sense of wonder and put humans and beasts in the gravest of danger. She finds friends she never knew she needed-a charming British boy who grew up with a griffon, a runaway witch seeking magic and home-while trying to hide her double life from her old friends and classmates. Marjan steps into a secret world hidden in plain sight, where mythical creatures are bought and sold, treasured and trapped. And now that he’s gone, she must take his place. The creatures out of the stories he told her were real-and he traveled the world to care for them. Then, one day, she receives a visitor who reveals something stunning: Marjan’s father was no ordinary veterinarian. In the wake of her father’s sudden death, she is trying to hold it all together: her schoolwork, friendships, and keeping her dad’s shoestring veterinary practice from going under. Tales of extraordinary beasts that filled her with curiosity and wonder.īut Marjan’s not a little girl anymore.

So began the stories Marjan’s father told her as a little girl-fables like the story of the girl who sprung a unicorn from a hunter’s snare, or the nomad boy who rescued a baby shirdal. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them meets Neil Gaiman in this thrilling novel about an Iranian American girl who discovers that her father was secretly a veterinarian to mythical creatures-and that she must take up his mantle, despite the many dangers.

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