The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes will revisit the world of Panem sixty-four years before the events of The Hunger Games, starting on the morning of the reaping of the Tenth Hunger Games. This Barnes & Noble YA Book Club Edition includes a reader's group guide and a Q&A with the author, Suzanne Collins, and her editor David Levithan.

Ambition will fuel him.
Competition will drive him.
But power has its price.

It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute.

The odds are against him. He’s been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined—every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute—and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.

As much as this is Coriolanus's origin story, it is an origin story for the Games themselves, an answer to the questions about their history posed by Katniss in Mockingjay, the final volume of the trilogy: "Did a group of people sit around and cast their votes on initiating the Hunger Games? Was there dissent? Did someone make a case for mercy?" People who love finding out the back stories in fictional universes—why Sherlock Holmes wears a deerstalker hat; where Indiana Jones got his scar—will relish the chance to learn these details.

Suzanne Collins is the author of the groundbreaking Hunger Games trilogy for young adults: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay. She is also the author of the picture book Year of the Jungle, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, and the New York Times bestselling Underland Chronicles series for middle-grade readers, which started with Gregor the Overlander. Suzanne lives with her family in Connecticut. You can find her online at suzannecollinsbooks.com.