A Great and Terrible Beauty

In 1895, sixteen-year-old Gemma Doyle witnesses a terrifying vision moments before her mother is found dead in a Bombay market — and is shipped off to Spence Academy for Young Ladies in England, grieving and increasingly certain her visions are more than nightmares. Initially an outsider, she's drawn into an uneasy friendship with Felicity, Pippa, and Ann after catching Felicity in a compromising situation.

Following clues from a dead girl's decades-old diary, the four discover a hidden doorway in the caves near the school into "the Realms" — a magical world where each girl can have her heart's truest desire. But the power they find there is unstable and dangerous, tied to an ancient order called the Order and a darker force stalking Gemma's visions, and claiming what they want comes at a devastating cost. The first book in Libba Bray's Gemma Doyle trilogy.