The Bequest: A Dark Academia Thriller - Hardcover

by Joanna Margaret (Author)

Named a "Most Anticipated" October Thriller by Bustle, PopSugar, & CrimeReads

After her professor's suspicious death, a PhD student uncovers dark machinations among her academic associates in this "richly atmospheric and irresistibly readable" (Joyce Carol Oates) Gothic mystery set between Scotland, Italy, and France.

Fleeing a disastrous affair with a colleague in Boston, Isabel Henley moves to Scotland to begin a PhD with a renowned feminist professor--only to learn, upon arrival, that her advisor has suffered a deadly fall. Soon after, Isabel is informed that another scholar at the university is about to publish a book on her dissertation topic, leaving her disconcerted and in search of a new subject, all while struggling to acclimate to her new home abroad.

Isabel needs a good friend during such a rocky start, and finds one when she reconnects with Rose Brewster, her charismatic classmate from undergrad. But when Rose confides to Isabel that she is in trouble, and then goes missing, Isabel's already-unsteady life is sent into a tailspin. A suicide note surfaces, followed by a coded message: Rose is alive but, unless Isabel can complete the research begun before her friend's disappearance, both women will be killed by her captors.

As Isabel follows the Rose's paper trail from Genoa to Florence and, finally, to Paris, she uncovers family secrets, the legend of an enormous cursed emerald, and a chain of betrayal and treason which parallels her own perilous present. If she can put the pieces together soon, she could solve a 400-year-old mystery--and save her and her friend's lives in the process.

Combining epistolary elements, Gothic suspense, and an atmospheric "dark academia" setting, The Bequest is a gripping literary thriller that will appeal to fans of Alex Michaelides' The Maidens and Donna Tartt's The Secret History.

Author Biography

Joanna Margaret is the author of The Bequest, The Daughters, and Souvenir. Her short story "Malena" appears in A Darker Shade of Noir: New Stories of Body Horror by Women Writers, and she received her MFA from NYU, where Joyce Carol Oates served as her thesis advisor. Before turning to writing fiction, Joanna Margaret was a historian, with a PhD from the University of St. Andrews, whose previous writing and scholarly work focused on Florentine aristocrats in sixteenth-century France. She serves on the board of directors of the Key West Literary Seminar and lives in New York.