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Spoiled Milk - Hardcover
$25.49
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Spoiled Milk
$25.49
Returns: if a book arrives damaged or isn't the one you ordered, email us within 7 days of delivery and we'll replace it or refund you, usually with nothing to send back. Refund policy
Is this book for you?
- Feels
- Atmospheric, Eerie, Melancholy
- Kind of story
- Gothic, Supernatural horror, Literary horror
- About
- Coming of age, Queer stories, Desire
- Pace
- Slow burn
- How dark
- 3 of 5. Dark, with real menace
- Romance
- A subplot
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Featured in our reading guide: New Horror Books of 2026: 10 to Read This October
A thrilling gothic debut - The untimely death of a student at a girls' boarding school marks the first in a haunting series of escalating supernatural events, and uncovers buried truths of teenage repression, queer desire, and the everyday horror of coming of age.
"A truly impeccable novel." - Julia Armfield, author of Our Wives Under the Sea
"This book destroyed me." - Tamsyn Muir, author of Gideon the Ninth
In 1928, Emily Locke's final year at the isolated Briarley School for Girls is derailed when Violet, the school's brightest star (and a cunning beauty for whom Emily would do anything), falls to her death on her eighteenth birthday. Emily and her buttoned-up rival Evelyn are, for once, in agreement: Violet's death was no accident. There's an obvious culprit, the French schoolmistress with whom Violet was getting a little too close - they only need to prove it.
Desperate for answers, Emily and her classmates turn to spiritualism, hoping for a glimpse of wisdom from the great beyond. To their shock, Violet's spirit appears, choosing pious Evelyn as her unlikely medium. And Violet has a warning for them: the danger has just begun.
Something deadly is infecting Briarley. It starts with rotten food and curdled milk, but quickly grows more threatening. As the body count rises and the students race to save themselves, Emily must confront the fatal forces poisoning the school. Emily's fight for survival forces her to reevaluate everything she knows: about Violet, Evelyn, Briarley, and, ultimately, herself. Avery Curran channels the indelible ambience and intrigue of the classic boarding school novel while turning the beloved genre on its head in this visceral, exuberant debut.
Author Biography
AVERY CURRAN studied history at university, where she first became interested in spiritualism. She finished an M.A. in Victorian studies in 2021, and is now midway through a Ph.D. on spiritualism and queerness in the nineteenth century. She was born in New York City and currently lives in London with her girlfriend and their cat.
Details
- Author: Avery Curran
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 336
- Published: March 10, 2026
- Size: 5.76 x 8.36 x 1.43 in
- ISBN: 9780385551595
Praise
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A compulsively readable twist on the old-fashioned school story.
The Guardian
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Read if any combination of the words 'yearning lesbian Gothic haunted-house body horror' gets you going.
The Cut
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Chilling... Brimming with spiritualism and sensuality, this neo-gothic story navigates the terrain between life and death, and between childhood and adulthood.
The New Yorker
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Spoiled Milk is a dirty little jewel of a novel, as thrilling as it is unsettling, as moving as it is frequently horrifying. Curran writes with incredible precision on fear, desire and the insidiousness of authority and empire. A truly impeccable novel.
Julia Armfield, author of Our Wives Under the Sea
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