Plain Bad Heroines: A Novel
(Adobe EPUB eBook, OverDrive Read)
NATIONAL 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...
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Emily M. Danforth. (2020). Plain Bad Heroines: A Novel. HarperCollins.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Emily M. Danforth. 2020. Plain Bad Heroines: A Novel. HarperCollins.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines: A Novel. HarperCollins, 2020.
MLA Citation (style guide)Emily M. Danforth. Plain Bad Heroines: A Novel. HarperCollins, 2020.
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emily m. danforth is the author of the highly acclaimed young adult novel The Miseducation of Cameron Post. She has an MFA in fiction from the University of Montana and a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She lives with her wife and two terrible dogs in Rhode Island. Plain Bad Heroines is her first adult novel.
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NATIONAL 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...
- reviews
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- source: Hillary Kelly, Los Angeles Times
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"An exquisitely plotted, winkingly crafted romp . . . a supersized Slurpee that will satiate you and leave behind a sugar high. . . . [Danforth's] gifted at braiding characterization, suspenseful plotting and frequent injections of flat-out terror . . . exhilarating." — Hillary Kelly, Los Angeles Times
"A multi-faceted novel, equal parts gothic, sharply funny, sapphic romance, historical, and, of course, spooky." — Entertainment Weekly
"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,
"A delicious Gothic tale . . . a tasty brew of creepy shuttered prep school, creepy reopened prep school, queer feminist legacy and modern adaptation of said legacy . . . will make you crave more of Danforth's smart, funny prose." — Bethanne Patrick, Washington Post
"A layered, farcical take on the sins of woman . . . [danforth] uses vivid language to capture each time and place, in a narrative that is rare even among lesbian fiction . . . clever quips and striking imagery." — New York Times Book Review
"Brimming from start to finish with sly humor and gothic mischief, Plain Bad Heroines is a brilliant piece of exuberant storytelling by a terrifically talented author." — Sarah Waters, New York Times bestselling author of The Little Stranger and Fingersmith
"Emily Danforth's ingenious, jaw-dropping novel is a time-hopping epic about the history of a cursed New England girls' school, doomed lovers, and an equally cursed modern-day retelling via film, plus yellow jackets. Hell, those yellow jackets! The expertly rendered characters are as heartbreaking as they are written with an integrity of vision that saturates every page. Plain Bad Heroines is a queer roar and it's terrifying and it's a goddamned triumph." — Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Cabin at the End of the World
"Plain Bad Heroines wears its brilliance lightly and like the Black Oxford apples described in these pages, it's dark, sweet, and addictive. Emily Danforth displays all the gothic wit of Edward Gorey and all the soaring metafictional ambitions of David Mitchell, alongside a generosity and humanity that is uniquely her own. Simply one of the best books I've read in the last decade." — Joe Hill, New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman
"Stuffed with footnotes, and stories inside stories inside stories, Emily M. Danforth's follow-up to The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a queer gothic coming-of-age story set at a cursed New England boarding school for girls. There are just a few sequences of words that fire up my pleasure centers the way that description does." — Vulture, 19 Books We're Excited to Read This Fall
"A short list of things you'll find in this novel: curses, lesbians, gilded-age society scandals, yellow jackets, a heaping dose of snark, and the nagging sense that the line between what's real and what isn't has been blurred. . . . It's the perfect autumn read for you and your best friend that you're secretly in love with, trust me." — Buzzfeed, 38 Great Books to Read This Fall, Recommended by Our Favorite Indie Booksellers
"[A] freewheeling, ambitious novel . . . The heroines of this story are neither plain nor bad, but human: rebellious, insecure, funny, deep with longing and scars still healing. And, yes,...
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May 1, 2020
This adult debut from the author of The Miseducation of Cameron Post (made into a Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning movie) opens in the early 1900s at the Brookhants School for Girls, where fans of shock-inducing memoirist Mary McLane form the Plain Bad Heroines Club and wind up dead in a field. A century later, a book celebrating the school's queer feminist history inspires a horror film adaptation. With a 50,000-copy first printing.
Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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Starred review from August 17, 2020
Danforth’s sumptuous sophomore novel (after The Miseducation of Cameron Post) chronicles the allegedly cursed 1902 memoir The Story of Mary MacLane and its link to the shuttered Brookhants School for Girls in Little Compton, R.I. In the present, Merritt Emmons is reviewing the screenplay adaptation of her book about three students who died at Brookhants in 1902, two of whom were attacked by a swarm of wasps under the watch of principal Libbie Brookhants and her partner Alex Trills, who also met eerie, premature deaths. The dead students had been obsessed with MacLane’s memoir, in which the author invokes the devil to satisfy her desire for women. Merritt has been asked to consult on the film, which features lesbian superstar Harper Harper and subpar but earnest Audrey Wells, who is told by the film’s director that the shoot, on location at Brookhants, will be rigged with spooky events to elicit genuine responses. On set, though, there is very real evidence of hauntin. Danforth creates a fantastic sense of dread andchampions queer female relationships throughout, delving into Libbie and Alex’s history and how their circumstances doomed them to their fate. Even readers who aren’t fans of horror will appreciate this bighearted story.
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Starred review from September 1, 2020
danforth's first adult novel is at once a sexy, funny, and spooky tale. Magnetic star Harper, author Merritt, and quiet, bold Aubrey come together to make a film about the real-life queer ghostly history of Brookhants School for Girls, a boarding school that was once haunted by a curse and a string of mysterious deaths. Danforth winds their story into the story of Brookhants itself, leading readers through a dread-filled, suspenseful tale with queer women always at its core. Plain Bad Heroines is visually luscious, from the buzz and sting of yellow-jackets and the sheen of black Oxford apples to the strange skim of black algae on water and the rich red of the provocative book by Mary McLane that inspires both rebellion and a strange despair in the young students. Dark, affectionate, creepy, this is a new classic in queer fantasy with Danforth crafting a meta-fiction mish-mash of genres that creates one glorious story dripping in sapphic blossoming and gay makeout sessions. The wry, knowing tone of its narrator, the queerness at its core, and the illustrations by Sara Lautman all contribute to a suspenseful rush that will leave the reader flipping furiously to the end.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)
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December 1, 2020
In this sprawling, structurally ambitious novel, the gruesome deaths of two turn-of-the-century boarding school girls haunt generations of women and the women they love. "It's a terrible story and one way to tell it is this: two girls in love and a fog of wasps cursed the place forever after." Unusual things happen at Brookhants School for Girls, a boarding school situated along the wild, rocky Rhode Island coastline. In 1902, Brookhants pupils become obsessed with Mary MacLane's salacious memoir, I Await the Devil's Coming. Detailing MacLane's lust for "the anemone lady" and her refusal of traditional gender norms, the book gives rise to the Plain Bad Heroine Society. When the club's leaders, Florence Hartshorn and Clara Broward, are found dead in one another's arms, the school's founders struggle to move beyond the tragedy only to be swept up in it themselves. The long, winding story of Brookhants' rise and fall is only one thread that danforth unravels throughout her adult debut. The novel's other major timeline takes place in contemporary Hollywood, where Harper Harper, the "indie-film-darling turned celesbian-megastar-influencer," sets out to produce her first film, a horror flick about Brookhants and its doomed teen lovers. Joining Harper on set are ingenue Audrey Wells, daughter of slasher film royalty, and Merritt Emmons, a wunderkind novelist whose first book inspired the film. The novel switchbacks between past and present, examining the sophisticated subculture of upper-crust Victorian-era lesbians and the Insta-fueled fame of queer icons in contemporary Hollywood. The novel's strength lies in its quiet insistence that queer women have always existed, that their lives deserve bigger, messier containers--even metafictional ones about a horror flick based on a novel based on a true story. Although danforth doggedly pursues the novel's structure over more than 600 pages, the pacing occasionally drags heavy as layers of Victorian silk. Even so, the novel manages to feel like a confection--surprising and honey-sweet on the tongue, to be savored even as it spooks. Creepy, meta, and a whole lot of fun.COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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NATIONAL 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 •...
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