A Great And Terrible Beauty

It's 1895, and after the tragic death of her mother in India, 16-year-old Gemma Doyle is shipped off from the life she knows on the subcontinent to join the Spence Academy in London. But Gemma is not like other girls there, with their impeccable manners, who remember their station and dance with grace.

Lonely, guilt-ridden, and prone to visions of the future that have an uncomfortable habit of coming true, Gemma's reception at the academy is a chilly one. To make things worse, she's being followed by a mysterious young Indian man, who has been sent to warn her to close her mind against the visions. At Spence, Gemma’s power to attract the supernatural unfolds, she becomes entangled with the school’s most powerful girls and she begins to learn of her mother’s connection to a shadowy group called The Order.

This vividly-drawn portrait of the Victorian age is a supremely readable and distinctive teenage novel, with both flair and originality.