The Island at the Edge of Night

In this haunting speculative novel, Strange (Sisters of the Lost Marsh) whisks readers to windswept Auk Island School, where tween Faye Fitzgerald is unceremoniously enrolled after a storm leaves her aunt gravely injured and unable to care for both Faye and her ill father. The forbidding academy, perched off the Scottish coast, proves as inhospitable as the sea that surrounds it. Headmaster Dr. Lighter and his wife, steely Nurse Violet, are unnerved by Faye’s different-colored eyes, a condition called heterochromia, and the year opens with the students attending a classmate’s funeral, which unsettles Faye. Even amid the gloom, Faye, long accustomed to isolation (“Other children didn’t speak to me—and I didn’t speak to them”), befriends classmates Boudicca Braithwaite and Prince Filiberto. Together, the trio—labeled “wicked” by the faculty for their curious nature—begin to suspect that the island’s moors conceal more than secrets. Rhythmic prose tantalizingly seeds hints of magic through the stark landscape, building an atmosphere that is simultaneously chilling and alluring. Helmed by a heroine whose quiet fortitude deepens into hard-won courage, it’s an evocative gothic horror tale in which friendship becomes both weapon and shield. Boudicca has brown skin; other characters cue as white. Ages 8–12. Agent: Luigi Bonomi, LBA Books. (June)