It s 1895, and after the suicide of her mother, 16-year-old Gemma Doyle is shipped off from the life she knows in India to Spence, a proper boarding school in England. Lonely, guilt-ridden, and prone to visions of the future that have an uncomfortable habit of coming true, Gemma s reception there is a chilly one. To make things worse, she s been followed by a mysterious young Indian man, a man sent to watch her. But why? What is her destiny? And what will her entanglement with Spence s most powerful girls and their foray into the spiritual world lead to? Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

In a starred review, PW called this debut novel set in Victorian times "riveting." When the 16-year-old narrator's mother dies, the teen envisions how it happened, then finds herself en route to a British boarding school. "The pace is swift, the finale gripping." Ages 12-up. (Mar.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Gr 9 Up-Libba Bray's new Gothic tale of a Victorian girls school with a deadly secret (Delacorte, 2003) is brought to life in Josephine Bailey's nuanced reading. At 16, Gemma must leave the only home she's known-colonial India-when her mother kills herself under bizarre circumstances and Gemma is both confused and intrigued by the details. Although she longed to see London while her family lived abroad, Gemma is disappointed to find that she's being packed off to finishing school there. At school, she stands up to the very circle of girls who seem to hold the most power, while also dealing with weird hallucinations and the furtive presence of the young man she first saw in Bombay on the day of her mother's death. The school and its administration hold fast to a secret about the class of 1871, which passed through it nearly a quarter century before Gemma's stay. As friendships develop between Gemma and three of the other students, and several of her teachers reveal interesting personal sides of themselves, the plot and the reader both tug the audience into the creepy depths beneath a cave on the school grounds. There the living girls find a pleasurable world populated by goddess figures-and Gemma's dead mother. How all this ultimately connects with that mysterious class of 1871 will delight Gothic fans and inspire those new to the genre to taste such classic writers in it as Daphne du Maurier. The audiobook is further enhanced with an afterword spoken by the author-a young Texas woman who describes how she researched the background details she needed to realize a story set in a place and time so far from her own daily experiences. Highly recommended for all collections serving high school students.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information