The Bewitching

With this equally spooky and sophisticated horror novel, bestseller Moreno-Garcia (The Seventh Veil of Salome) proves she’s as adept playing in the tropes of dark academia as any of the other subgenres she’s tried on. Grad student Minerva Contreras should be living her dream life, researching pioneering weird fiction author Beatrice Tremblay at New England’s Stoneridge College, where Tremblay herself studied, and where rumor has it her most famous novel found its inspiration. In 1934, Tremblay’s charismatic Spiritualist roommate, Virginia Somerset, disappeared after claiming she was being stalked by evil otherworldly creatures. As Minerva walks in Tremblay’s footsteps and meets those who knew her, the events described in her journals begin to feel familiar: first they bring to mind the stories Minerva’s great-grandmother, Alba, told of the terrible witchcraft that befell her in her youth, and then they seem to happen again, this time to Minerva. She will need all the wisdom of Tremblay and Alba to escape Virginia’s fate. Moreno-Garcia toggles between the gothic, über-privileged world of Stoneridge and the harsh reality of life in Alba’s Mexican village, keeping readers in the dark about how they connect, and then pulls the threads together in a searing finale. It’s as unsettling as it is unputdownable. (July)