Over a century later, the now abandoned and crumbling Brookhants is back in the news when wunderkind writer Merritt Emmons publishes a breakout book celebrating the queer, feminist history surrounding the “haunted and cursed” Gilded Age institution. Less than five years later, the Brookhants School for Girls closes its doors forever-but not before three more people mysteriously die on the property, each in a most troubling way.

This is where their bodies are later discovered with a copy of Mary’s book splayed beside them, the victims of a swarm of stinging, angry yellow jackets. They meet in secret in a nearby apple orchard, the setting of their wildest happiness and, ultimately, of their macabre deaths. To show their devotion to Mary, the girls establish their own private club and call it the Plain Bad Heroine Society. Flo and Clara, two impressionable students, are obsessed with each other and with a daring young writer named Mary MacLane, the author of a scandalous bestselling memoir. Our story begins in 1902, at the Brookhants School for Girls. The award-winning author of The Miseducation of Cameron Post makes her adult debut with this highly imaginative and original horror-comedy centered around a cursed New England boarding school for girls-a wickedly whimsical celebration of the art of storytelling, sapphic love, and the rebellious female spirit Named a Most Anticipated Book by Entertainment Weekly 'A multi-faceted novel, equal parts gothic, sharply funny, sapphic romance, historical, and, of course, spooky.” - ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

exquisite.' -Ron Charles, THE WASHINGTON POST what makes all this so much fun is Danforth’s deliciously ghoulish voice. “A delectable brew of gothic horror and Hollywood satire.

Plain bad heroines emily danforth