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Plain Bad Heroines

By Emily M. Danforth
Illustrators Illustrated by Sara Lautman Edition

Hardcover edition

Publisher HarperCollins Imprint William Morrow (Adult) ISBN

9780062942852

Awards and Honors 2021 Alex Awards Winner
2020 Editor's Choice Adult Books - Booklist

Plain Bad Heroines

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SKU
9780062942852J

CONTENT NOTIFICATIONS

Language: Strong Language,Sexual Content: Mild Sexual Content/Themes,Violence: General

Our story begins in 1902, at The Brookhants School for Girls. Flo and Clara, two impressionable students, are obsessed with each other and with a daring young writer named Mary MacLane, author of a scandalous bestselling memoir that transforms these acolytes into bold rebels. To show their devotion to Mary, the girls establish their own private club and call it The Plain Bad Heroine Society. They meet in secret in a nearby apple orchard, a seeming paradise, the setting of their wildest happiness and, ultimately, of their macabre deaths. This is where their bodies are later discovered, a copy of Mary’s book splayed beside them, the victims of a swarm of stinging, angry yellow jackets. Less than five years later, the School for Girls closes its doors forever—but not before three more people mysteriously die on the property, each in a most troubling manner.



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. Her bestseller inspires a controversial horror film adaptation starring celebrity actor and lesbian it girl Harper Harper playing the ill-fated heroine Flo, opposite B-list actress and former child star Audrey Wells, as Clara. But as Brookhants opens its gates once again, and our three modern heroines arrive on set to begin filming, past and present become grimly entangled—or perhaps just grimly exploited—and soon it’s impossible to tell where the curse leaves off and Hollywood begins.



A story within a story within a story and featuring black-and-white period illustrations, Plain Bad Heroines is a devilishly haunting, modern masterwork of metafiction that manages to combine the ghostly sensibility of Sarah Waters with the dark imagination of Marisha Pessl and the sharp humor and incisive social commentary of Curtis Sittenfeld into one laugh-out-loud funny, spellbinding, and wonderfully luxuriant read.

Black-and-white illustrations.
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Adult Crossover Thrillers Plus (Grades 11 & Up)

Adult Crossover Thrillers Plus

Adult Crossover Thrillers Plus (Grades 11 & Up)

For Grades 11 & Up

This 14-book category includes suspenseful fiction and nonfiction for high school readers who are ready for adult reading.
*Take note: these selections often contain mature situations and language that could be considered controversial.

14 books per Year
$309.26 per Year
Interests

Fiction, Mature Readers, Thriller/Horror/Mystery, Novels, Realistic Fiction

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