The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2020) is a prequel to Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy, set sixty-four years before the events of The Hunger Games. Its central character is eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow, who will become the series' principal antagonist as the tyrannical President of Panem. At the time of the novel, Snow is a penthouse-dwelling Capitol student concealing his family's near-total poverty, chosen to mentor a tribute in the 10th Hunger Games. His assigned tribute is Lucy Gray Baird, a singer from District 12 who performs at her own reaping. The novel traces the early Hunger Games as a still-developing institution and shows the Capitol's ruling class in a more precarious state than the polished totalitarian machinery of the trilogy. A film adaptation starring Tom Blyth as Snow was released in November 2023.

Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, boards. New York: Scholastic Press, 2020. ISBN: 9781338635171. #10661.
Fine in fine dust jacket.