From the New York Times bestselling author of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane comes a chilling mysteryβPrep meets The Crucible.
Β
Itβs senior year at St. Joanβs Academy, and school is a pressure cooker. College applications, the battle for valedictorian, deciphering boysβ texts: Through it all, Colleen Rowley and her friends are expected to keep it together. Until they canβt.
Β
First itβs the schoolβs queen bee, Clara Rutherford, who suddenly falls into uncontrollable tics in the middle of class. Her mystery illness quickly spreads to her closest clique of friends, then more students and symptoms follow: seizures, hair loss, violent coughing fits. St. Joanβs buzzes with rumor; rumor blossoms into full-blown panic.
Β
Soon the media descends on Danvers, Massachusetts, as everyone scrambles to find something, or someone, to blame. Pollution? Stress? Or are the girls faking? Only Colleenβwhoβs been reading The Crucible for extra creditβcomes to realize what nobody else has: Danvers was once Salem Village, where another group of girls suffered from a similarly bizarre epidemic three centuries agoΒ .Β .Β .
Β
Inspired by true eventsβfrom seventeenth-century colonial life to the halls of a modern-day high schoolβConversion casts a spell. With her signature wit and passion, New York Times bestselling author Katherine Howe delivers an exciting and suspenseful novel, a chilling mystery that raises the question, whatβs really happening to the girls at St. Joanβs?