PALACES OF THE CROW IS COMING MAY 19 2026 AND IS AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER NOW! 

​"Nayler weaves a tapestry of resilience and resistance as intricate and well-constructed as the braided twigs of a crow’s nest . . . an impassioned paean to togetherness even in the midst of the chaotic isolation of war and to the power of storytelling to keep memory and hope alive."
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-- Publishers Weekly starred review

"A folk saying rings throughout Nayler’s impressive novel: We fear werewolves not because they are men who turn into wolves, but wolves who turn into men."

​-- Kirkus starred review

"Nayler offers a searing epic about the horrifying costs of war and the terrifying process of sanitizing the past to protect the guilty and the complicit; it wraps readers in its intensity from the first page. Highly recommended."

-- Library Journal starred review

In Ray Nayler’s speculative novel of the recent past, four young teens caught between Nazis and the Red Army survive winter in the woods with the help of a flock of highly intelligent crows.

Neriya, a young Jewish girl who dreams of becoming a biologist, has befriended a local flock of crows in her shtetl. Czesław is an underage Polish soldier who deserts the Red Army and runs into the freezing Lithuanian wilderness. Kezia is a Roma horse trader whose family is on the run from Soviet collectivization. As the German blitzkrieg crashes across the border in June 1941, all three are caught up in the onslaught. Along with a nameless, abandoned boy who cannot speak, they are driven into the primeval forest, where they survive by forming an unbreakable bond with one another―and with Neriya’s intelligent crows, who have a magnificent secret of their own to protect.

As the war goes on, the crows warn the children of danger and help them hide from the human threats of the forest―not only the Germans but also Russian deserters, Polish partisans, fascist Lithuanian police, and the other bandits and outcasts wandering the treacherous landscape.
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Hugo and Locus Award winning author Ray Nayler was born in Quebec and raised in California. He lived and worked abroad for two decades in Russia, Central Asia, Vietnam, the Caucasus, and the Balkans.

​Ray's Locus Award winning first novel was The Mountain in the Sea, which was also a finalist for the Nebula, the Arthur C. Clarke, and the Los Angeles Times' Ray Bradbury Awards. 

Ray's novella The Tusks of Extinction won the 2025 Hugo Award, and was also a Nebula and Locus Award finalist. 

His third book, the cybernetic political thriller Where the Axe is Buried, was published in April of 2025.

​Ray most recently served as international advisor to the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and as visiting scholar at the George Washington University's Institute for International Science and Technology Policy. 

Ray lives in Washington, DC with his wife Anna, their daughter Lydia, and two rescued cats. A longer biography can be found here.