Anatomy

With an elegantly macabre touch, Schwartz (And We’re Off) stitches a haunting romance with the gritty realities of corpse-related medical practices in 19th-century Edinburgh. Thanks to her absent father, a lord and navy captain, and preoccupied mother, 17-year-old Hazel Sinnet is left alone in the castle with two servants; she’s also allowed free rein of her father’s library, including the scientific and surgical tomes dear to her heart. As the specter of plague threatens—the illness that claimed her older brother—Hazel hatches a daring ploy to offer more help than society will strictly allow, wearing traditionally male clothes to take classes in surgery. Joining her quest is an unlikely companion, stagehand and “resurrection man” Jack, whose ability to procure bodies through less-than-legal means meshes with Hazel’s desire to practice surgery. Though Hazel is all but engaged to her viscount cousin, her unlikely, secret friendship with Jack blossoms as delicately curated details decorate an intricately woven, unsettling plot that is occasionally overwhelmed by Hammer-like atmospherics. Characters read as white. Ages 13–up. Agent: Dan Mandel, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc. (Feb.)