The Reformatory

Paperback | Standalone | 576 pages

genre: historical horror, historical fiction

tropes: ghosts and hauntings, Jim Crow era, sibling bond, survival, racial terror, coming of age

who this is for: horror readers who want their scares rooted in something real. this one is for anyone who knows that American history is already haunted and wants a book that treats it that way. fans of Beloved will feel this one.

official synopsis
Florida, 1950. Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens Jr. is sentenced to the Gracetown School for Boys after he kicks a white boy who attacked his sister Gloria. What the courts call a reformatory, the boys inside know as something else entirely. Robbie has always been able to see ghosts and the school is full of them — children who never made it out. While Robbie tries to survive what's being done to him and the boys around him, Gloria fights from the outside to bring her brother home before the school claims him too.

Inspired by the real history of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys. Winner of the Bram Stoker Award and the Shirley Jackson Award. Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner.