Plain Bad Heroines: A NovelNATIONAL BESTSELLER “A delectable brew of gothic horror and Hollywood satire . . . [and] what makes all this so much fun is Danforth’s deliciously ghoulish voice . . . exquisite." —Ron Charles, THE WASHINGTON POST "A multi-faceted novel, equal parts gothic, sharply funny, sapphic romance, historical, and, of course, spooky.” —ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY Named a Most Anticipated Book by Entertainment Weekly • Washington Post • USA Today • Time • O, The Oprah Magazine • Buzzfeed • Harper's Bazaar • Vulture • Parade • HuffPost • Refinery29 • Popsugar • E! News • Bustle • The Millions • GoodReads • Autostraddle • Lambda Literary • Literary Hub • and more! 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 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, the author of a scandalous bestselling memoir. 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, the setting of their wildest happiness and, ultimately, of their macabre deaths. 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. 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. 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 bestselling book 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-inspired 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. “Full of Victorian sapphic romance, metafictional horror, biting misandrist humor, Hollywood intrigue, and multiple timeliness—all replete with evocative illustrations that are icing on a deviously delicious cake.” –O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE |
Contents
About That Missing Copy of Mary MacLanes Book | |
Tinseltown | |
How to Import a Martian Into Your Contacts | |
A Strange and Ugly Thing That Happened in | |
Bodies Piling Up Snow Piling Up But Where to Place | |
Across Town a Scuttle | |
Typists Block | |
The Players Assemble | |
An Undesirable Morbidness | |
Road Apples | |
Trifle With the Trifle | |
Even in East Bumblebuzzard Rhode Island | |
A Tower Tour a Carpet Picnic a Sound in the Night | |
Finally Someone Tends to Those Fucking Plants | |
Know Theyll Always Have the Dumpsters | |
Gray Dawn Bleak Mourning | |
The Unofficial Chemistry Read | |
The Happenings at BrookhantsAudition Scene 2 | |
Bo Dhillon Makes His Case | |
Harold Brookhants Makes His Case | |
What to Make of This Arrangement? | |
Alex Sees Things in Stereoview | |
No More Necks | |
Tricky Thicket | |
Apple Bruise | |
Updates From the Set of The Happenings at Brookhants as Told | |
Ava in the Orchard | |
Elaine Brookhants Socialite and Philanthropist Dies at Age 81 | |
The Red Carpet After | |