A01=Hanna Alkaf
AAPI
anxiety
anxiety panic attacks
Author_Hanna Alkaf
betrayal
Category=YFCB
Category=YNMF
Category=YNXB
Category=YXQD
cover ups
dark academia
disappearances
epidemic
eq_bestseller
eq_childrens
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_personal-social-topics
eq_teenage-young-adult
family
ghost stories
grief
gripping
haunting
horror
hysteria
investigation
Japanese occupation
lies
malaysia
mental health
missing person
Muslim characters
ptsd
scream
secrets
sexual assault harassment
sisterhood
tragedy
trauma
Product details
- ISBN 9781534494596
- Weight: 299g
- Dimensions: 140 x 210mm
- Publication Date: 23 Oct 2025
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Three starred reviews!
An all-girls school is struck with mysterious cases of screaming hysteria in this “gripping, perceptive” (Booklist, starred review) dark academia young adult thriller haunted by a deeply buried history clawing to the light.
For over a hundred years, girls have fought to attend St. Bernadette’s, with its reputation for shaping only the best and brightest young women.
Unfortunately, there is also the screaming.
When a student begins to scream in the middle of class, a chain reaction starts that impacts the entire school. By the end of the day, seventeen girls are affected—along with St. Bernadette’s stellar reputation.
Khadijah’s got her own scars to tend to, and watching her friends succumb to hysteria only rips apart wounds she’d rather keep closed. But when her sister falls to the screams, Khad knows she’s the only one who can save her.
Rachel has always been far too occupied trying to reconcile her overbearing mother’s expectations with her own secret ambitions to pay attention to school antics. But just as Rachel finds her voice, it turns into screams.
Together, the two girls find themselves digging deeper into the school’s dark history, hunting for the truth. Little do they know that a specter lurks in the darkness, watching, waiting, and hungry for its next victim…
An all-girls school is struck with mysterious cases of screaming hysteria in this “gripping, perceptive” (Booklist, starred review) dark academia young adult thriller haunted by a deeply buried history clawing to the light.
For over a hundred years, girls have fought to attend St. Bernadette’s, with its reputation for shaping only the best and brightest young women.
Unfortunately, there is also the screaming.
When a student begins to scream in the middle of class, a chain reaction starts that impacts the entire school. By the end of the day, seventeen girls are affected—along with St. Bernadette’s stellar reputation.
Khadijah’s got her own scars to tend to, and watching her friends succumb to hysteria only rips apart wounds she’d rather keep closed. But when her sister falls to the screams, Khad knows she’s the only one who can save her.
Rachel has always been far too occupied trying to reconcile her overbearing mother’s expectations with her own secret ambitions to pay attention to school antics. But just as Rachel finds her voice, it turns into screams.
Together, the two girls find themselves digging deeper into the school’s dark history, hunting for the truth. Little do they know that a specter lurks in the darkness, watching, waiting, and hungry for its next victim…
Hanna Alkaf is the author of The Weight of Our Sky, Queen of the Tiles, The Girl and the Ghost, Hamra and the Jungle of Memories, and The Hysterical Girls of St. Bernadette’s, as well as coeditor of the young adult anthology The Grimoire of Grave Fates. She graduated with a degree in journalism from Northwestern University and has spent most of her life working with words, both in fiction and nonfiction. She lives in Kuala Lumpur with her family.
