The Corpse Queen
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“Deliciously macabre and utterly decadent.” —Kerri Maniscalco, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Stalking Jack the Ripper
In this dark and twisty feminist historical mystery, a teenage girl starts a new life as a grave robber but quickly becomes entangled in a murderer's plans.
Soon after her best friend Kitty mysteriously dies, orphaned seventeen-year-old Molly Green is sent away to live with her "aunt." With no relations that she knows of, Molly assumes she has been sold as a maid for the price of an extra donation in the church orphanage's coffers. Such a thing is not unheard of. There are only so many options for an unmarried girl in 1850s Philadelphia. Only, when Molly arrives, she discovers her aunt is very much real, exceedingly wealthy, and with secrets of her own. Secrets and wealth she intends to share—for a price.
Molly's estranged aunt Ava, has built her empire by robbing graves and selling the corpses to medical students who need bodies to practice surgical procedures. And she wants Molly to help her procure the corpses. As Molly learns her aunt's trade in the dead of night and explores the mansion by day, she is both horrified and deeply intrigued by the anatomy lessons held at the old church on her aunt's property. Enigmatic Doctor LaValle's lessons are a heady mixture of knowledge and power and Molly has never wanted anything more than to join his male-only group of students. But the cost of inclusion is steep and with a murderer loose in the city, the pursuit of power and opportunity becomes a deadly dance.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Smartly written with a decidedly dark demeanor, Herrman's (Consumption, for adults) young adult debut interweaves death and self-determination. In 1850s Philadelphia, nearly 17-year-old orphan Molly Green, who is of Irish descent, is stunned by the death—seemingly by suicide—and mutilation of her apparently pregnant best friend, Kitty. Molly is sent from the orphanage to stay with her newly discovered aunt, who just so happens to be the infamous Corpse Queen, who oversees the buying and selling of bodies and is "one of the few places in town to deal in anomalies." Once situated in the wealthy woman's home, Molly learns that the new luxuries come with a price—in addition to entering high society, she must gather and prepare bodies, supplying the renowned Dr. LaValle with the cadavers on which his medical students practice surgery. As her own passion for the medical profession grows, a figure known as the Knifeman kills and dismembers young women across the city, and Molly makes it her mission to put an end to his reign. Balancing gritty details about anatomy and dissection with warm, class-spanning friendships among the cued-white characters, this immersive, Frankenstein-tinged novel considers misogyny, socioeconomic divides, and social norms at a specific moment in modern surgery's beginnings. Ages 12–up.
