Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
---|---|---|
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake) | TEEN FICTION HER | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Park Grove Library (Cottage Grove) | TEEN FICTION HER | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | TEEN FICTION HER | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | TEEN FICTION HER | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
"Deliciously macabre and utterly decadent." -Kerri Maniscalco, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Stalking Jack the Ripper
In this dark and twisty feminist historical mystery, a teenage girl starts a new life as a grave robber but quickly becomes entangled in a murderer's plans.
Soon after her best friend Kitty mysteriously dies, orphaned seventeen-year-old Molly Green is sent away to live with her "aunt." With no relations that she knows of, Molly assumes she has been sold as a maid for the price of an extra donation in the church orphanage's coffers. Such a thing is not unheard of. There are only so many options for an unmarried girl in 1850s Philadelphia. Only, when Molly arrives, she discovers her aunt is very much real, exceedingly wealthy, and with secrets of her own. Secrets and wealth she intends to share-for a price.
Molly's estranged aunt Ava, has built her empire by robbing graves and selling the corpses to medical students who need bodies to practice surgical procedures. And she wants Molly to help her procure the corpses. As Molly learns her aunt's trade in the dead of night and explores the mansion by day, she is both horrified and deeply intrigued by the anatomy lessons held at the old church on her aunt's property. Enigmatic Doctor LaValle's lessons are a heady mixture of knowledge and power and Molly has never wanted anything more than to join his male-only group of students. But the cost of inclusion is steep and with a murderer loose in the city, the pursuit of power and opportunity becomes a deadly dance.
Author Notes
Heather Herrman's fiction blends beauty and the macabre. Her obsession with horror began with a sixth-grade slumber party viewing of Night of the Demons . She loves prairie winds, tales of wicked women, and landscapes that look like they could eat you. Her debut horror novel, Consumption , is available through Random House/Hydra. She holds an MFA in fiction from New Mexico State University and is an active member of The Horror Writer's Association. Her work has received support from The Prague Writer's Program and The Nebraska Arts Council. Heather currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up--Seventeen-year-old orphan Molly Green's bleak life is altered when her best friend dies and she is suddenly claimed by an unknown aunt. In order to live with her wealthy Aunt Ava in her gothic mansion, Molly must work for her aunt's business: illegally collecting cadavers for Dr. LaValle's anatomy lessons. Dr. LaValle, emphasizing human oddities, uses the bodies to teach his medical students. Molly agrees to collect bodies but soon finds out that there is a killer on the loose, the Knifeman. She seeks to discover the Knifeman's identity while spending her nights robbing graves. Will she find the killer before the killer finds her? Set in 1850s Philadelphia, this macabre novel is full of death, corpses, and anomalies. It highlights the dark practice of body snatching that was historically used to study anatomy. The writing is fast paced and highlights Molly and her aunt as independent feminists. The dark plot flows well with a surprise ending, keeping readers intrigued. VERDICT A great YA addition to libraries serving high school students, this gothic fiction title will appeal to young adult fans of the horror genre.--Nancy Hawkins
Publisher's Weekly Review
Smartly written with a decidedly dark demeanor, Herrman's (Consumption, for adults) young adult debut interweaves death and self-determination. In 1850s Philadelphia, nearly 17-year-old orphan Molly Green, who is of Irish descent, is stunned by the death--seemingly by suicide--and mutilation of her apparently pregnant best friend, Kitty. Molly is sent from the orphanage to stay with her newly discovered aunt, who just so happens to be the infamous Corpse Queen, who oversees the buying and selling of bodies and is "one of the few places in town to deal in anomalies." Once situated in the wealthy woman's home, Molly learns that the new luxuries come with a price--in addition to entering high society, she must gather and prepare bodies, supplying the renowned Dr. LaValle with the cadavers on which his medical students practice surgery. As her own passion for the medical profession grows, a figure known as the Knifeman kills and dismembers young women across the city, and Molly makes it her mission to put an end to his reign. Balancing gritty details about anatomy and dissection with warm, class-spanning friendships among the cued-white characters, this immersive, Frankenstein-tinged novel considers misogyny, socioeconomic divides, and social norms at a specific moment in modern surgery's beginnings. Ages 12--up. Agent: Barbara Poelle, Irene Goodman Literary. (Sept.)
Kirkus Review
A teenage grave robber needs to find a killer before he finds her in Herrman's first novel for young adults. Molly Green, 17, has barely begun to cope with the death of her only friend, Kitty, when a wealthy woman claiming to be her aunt liberates her from the Philadelphia-area orphanage where she's spent the last several years. Before Molly can even set foot inside her aunt Ava's gothic mansion, she's tasked with picking up what turns out to be a severed human head. Ava procures human bodies--the fresher the better--for Dr. LaValle, who uses them to teach medical students anatomy. Molly's adept at dealing with the naturally dead but has a harder time with the murder victims who bear evidence of precise knifework reminiscent of a wound she found on Kitty's corpse. This macabre novel, told primarily from Molly's point of view, is more horror than history. Several characters, including Ava's assistant, one-eyed Tom, and Molly's heavily tattooed sex worker friend, Ginny, border on the grotesque, but none drop into stereotype. All characters default to White. Despite a scattering of historical inaccuracies, the narrative flows smoothly, and the plot rockets along, greased by the rot of the dead, to a satisfying, and somewhat surprising, conclusion. If Poe's daughter told a story, this might be it. (author's note) (Horror. 12-18) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
In 1850s Philadelphia, Molly Green, 17, grapples with the supposed suicide of her best friend at the orphanage. Abruptly, Molly is sent to live with a wealthy aunt she never knew existed. Her aunt, it turns out, is the "Corpse Queen," the woman who traffics in cadavers for a medical school run by Dr. LaValle. In exchange for her luxurious new living situation, Molly is to accompany her aunt's assistant each night to retrieve bodies, helping to deliver and prepare them for the doctor. Molly's new activities foster an interest in medicine and friendships with sex workers in a cabaret, all while area murders of young women at the hands of "The Knifeman" increase. Despite a few close calls, Molly is determined to end his killing spree before she becomes his next victim. Stylishly smart and macabre, the story tempers grisly occurrences with Molly's feminist attitudes and unflagging concern for the poor and the young women populating the city. While some scenes concern dissection and gruesome murders, others sparkle with class-defying friendships and warmth. Part mystery, part thriller, and part family discovery, this is a delicious horror story from which the reader can't look away.
Excerpts
Excerpts
The dead do not always keep their secrets. Sometimes the living must do it for them. Tucking the knife into her pocket, Molly Green climbed down into the grave. The river had slipped inside the dead girl like a rotten kiss, swelling her skin until it split. Her once-beautiful raven hair was tangled and clotted with mud, and a rancid smell rose from the body like potted meat left in the sun. What she was about to do made her think of the horrible stories the nuns told. About a queen of corpses in Philadelphia. "Oh, Kitty," she whispered. Struggling to stay calm, she wrapped her arms around her friend and lifted. From above, the moon's fading glow turned Molly's red hair to flames. Kitty's corpse peeled up reluctantly from the ground, like dough scraped too soon from a pan. Parts of her seemed to want to stay stuck forever in the frozen February earth, and the harder Molly wrenched, the more she felt she would break her. "Damn it," Molly whispered. "Let me help you!" There was a terrible second when she was sure Kitty's limbs would simply pull apart like a bug's legs caught in flypaper, but then she yanked harder and the body tumbled free. Molly lay there, gasping, Kitty's dead body on top of her, the weight unbearably heavy on her heart. Overhead, a grease moth circled lazily, then landed, seeking to feed. Molly felt its tiny, delicate feet skitter across her skin. In that instant, she wanted nothing more than to give up. To scream until the nuns found her, and then maybe she could die too. They'd put her in an asylum, and she could stay there for the rest of her days, screaming with the other madwomen, pulling out her hair and banging her head on stone walls, where at least then she could be free from the constant disappointment of others. No. It's Kitty , she reminded herself. Kitty, whom you love. Kitty, who could not make a corner on a bed, who laughed like a bird and sang like a tiger. Kitty. Your Kitty. The stink was nearly unbearable now, but there was something sweetly familiar in the rot, a scent that made her think of Christmas. She and Kitty had stolen an entire ham from the nuns' last feast day, and no one had ever been the wiser. "The trick," said Kitty, "is to commit your sins in plain sight." And that was what they'd done, carrying the tray between them out the side door of the orphanage, as brave as you please. A passing priest had even offered them the sign of the cross. They had not been able to stop laughing, the two of them triumphantly devouring their spoils, hidden high up in an old oak tree like giddy crows. Licking the slick of peppermint-and-clove glaze from their frozen fingers. Now, using her knife, she reached around Kitty and began to cut away what was left of the ruined dress. The blade slipped, its rusty metal dull from too many kitchen washings, slicing jaggedly into her palm. She felt blood welling to the surface but did not stop. The dress fell away. Molly ran her fingers up the icy skin, searching. She had seen it only once--a small pink piece of flesh, no bigger than a finger. She and Kitty had been swimming in the river, the sunlight dancing between them. Its rays caught a jeweled drop of water on the wiggling nub just below the small of Kitty's back. But as quickly as the strange limb had appeared, Kitty had submerged it. "The priest says anomalies of the flesh are a punishment," she whispered. Molly should have turned away. Refused to involve herself in the lives of another orphan, as she always had before she met Kitty. Instead, she said, "The priest is a great fat fucking liar." The words hung between them like a dare. Then Kitty laughed, and everything changed. In that moment, they became more than just two orphans--they became bound. Sisters. "No one else can ever know." Kitty's face grew serious. "Please, Molly. They'll never let me be just a girl again. I'll be a sermon or . . . or . . . a freak." "I swear it," Molly had promised. From afar came the sound of approaching voices. The nuns, finally come to clean the body. They should have done it back at the church, as they did for all the other dead. Molly had waited all night, hiding herself in the priest's confession closet after she'd heard they'd dragged her missing friend's body from the river. But the body had never arrived, and in the last hours before daybreak, not knowing what else to do, she had come here, had watched as the new gardener pulled Kitty's body from his shed and tossed it like trash into the hole. The man was a Swedish Protestant and had either not been told to leave the body in the church or, with his limited English, had simply misunderstood. The nuns' voices drew closer. "Hurry up, Mary Margaret. That fool gardener's already put her in the ground. Someone find him and have him dig her out." When they cleaned Kitty, they'd see the tail, and then Molly knew what would happen--like a brood of clucking hens, they'd bring the juicy worm of a story to Mother Superior. Kitty would no longer just be a girl; she'd be a girl who had sinned. A girl who had done something so terrible that God had punished her with a disfigurement before she was even born. They'd say she'd deserved it. They'd say, probably, that she deserved to be dead too. And they wouldn't say it silently. They'd let the priest preach it from his pulpit, spread Kitty's name like an infection to the other orphan girls, along with all the other doomed women he railed against each Sunday. The moon's cool glow grew pink, eclipsed by the rising sun. Molly lifted her face to its bloody light. Grabbing Kitty's lifeless hand, she held it a final time. Mother Superior was wrong. Kitty would never have left her willingly. I'll find who did this to you, Kitty, I swear it. And when I do . . . She felt the rage rise like a wave in her breast but quickly tamped it down. She had but minutes. Seconds, maybe. The nuns might not give Kitty's stained soul the burial it deserved, but they would not besmirch God by sending filthy flesh to his judgment table. With all her strength, Molly crawled from beneath the waterlogged body. She had failed Kitty once. She would not fail her again. Standing above the corpse, she raised the knife . . . But the tail was already gone. Excerpted from The Corpse Queen by Heather M. Herrman All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.