*FEATURED IN SUNDAY TIMES, NEW YORK TIMES, APPLE'S BEST BOOKS, AMAZON'S BEST BOOKS OF JUNE,CRIMEREADS RECOMMENDS AND LITHUB'S TOP BOOKS*'SARAH WATERS AND DONNA TARTT SQUAD, BUCKLE UP: Killingly is hitting the Plain Bad Heroines place in my heart again' Autostraddle'Impressive' Sunday Times'Gothic atmosphere, great period detail and a genuine shock at the end' Guardian1897, New England. Agnes and Bertha are best friends. Clever, eccentric misfits at an elite college for young women, they study earnestly, write poems for each other and explore the woods around campus at night. One morning, Bertha vanishes.Called down from Boston, renowned missing person expert Detective Higham arrives to find the tranquil college in chaos. A treasured pearl dagger has disappeared from a student's bedroom. The most popular debutante on campus is losing her mind. There are rumours of a ghostly woman at the train station.As he questions the students and teachers, Higham unearths a strange story of doomed love, ambition and tragedy which could shatter the college's glittering reputation forever . . .A gothic, turn-of-the-century campus thriller about female desire, rage and ambition, perfect for fans of TRIFLERS NEED NOT APPLY, THE BINDING and FINGERSMITH . . .*EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT KILLINGLY:'A haunting story . . . will stay with me long after reading' ELIZABETH LEE, author of Cunning Women'Completely engrossing. Unforgettable!' MARTHA CONWAY, author of The Physician's Daughter'Beutner is masterful at depicting the intrigue and innuendo of a women's college.Perfect pacing . . . grows increasingly shocking as the pages turn' The Akron Beacon Journal

Katharine Beutner is an assistant professor of English at the College of Wooster in Ohio. Her first novel, Alcestis, won the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award in 2011 and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Association's Lesbian Debut Fiction Award. Her writing has appeared in Tinfish, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Toast and other publications. Recently, she received an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award. She is the editor in chief of The Dodge, a magazine of eco-writing and translation, and lives in Cleveland, Ohio.