Night Objects

A woman reflects on the suspicious death of her boarding school classmate in Raphael’s riveting debut. In chapters titled “Before,” 15-year-old Lenny Winter describes her childhood on a houseboat in Port Angeles, Wash., with her mother and stepfather. After her mother’s untimely death, Lenny is accepted to the ritzy Blanchard School on scholarship, where she struggles to fit in with the offspring of the Pacific Northwest’s rich and privileged. To remedy that, she befriends members of Blanchard’s secretive Pascalianum Club, setting her on a course that ends with the violent death of one of the club’s members—and Lenny insisting she’s not responsible for it. Chapters titled “After” and set in the present feature an adult Lenny reflecting on her experiences at Blanchard, with Raphael doling out tantalizing clues about what happened all those decades ago, and why it might still be on a grown-up Lenny’s mind. The core mystery helps Raphael maintain steady suspense, but she delivers more than thrills, probing potent themes of grief, classism, and the slippery nature of memory. Readers will be eager to see what Raphael does next. Agent: Danya Kukafka, Trellis Literary. (May)