A. J. Elwood studied literature and history, which everyone assured her would never have any relevance to what she ended up doing. She remains fascinated by times when people could believe in things we think of as madness and have perfectly good reasons for doing so. An early obsession with fairy tales has stayed with her and she loves to pen stories that contain a little bit of magic and often more than a little of the strange. She also writes as Alison Littlewood and tweets @Ali__L.

An eerie tale of young girls obsession and what happens when it grows out of hand, perfect for fans of dark academia, The Secret History and Picnic at Hanging Rock. 1864. Banished from her parents farm to a boarding school for young ladies, Ivy feels utterly alone. In a crumbling and isolated seminary that has seen better days, she is shunned by the other pupils for her working-class origins, and mourns for her sister, who died not long after she was sent away.Hope comes in the form of a new teacher, Mademoiselle Emélie Blanc, but almost immediately, suspicions are raised that she is not all she should be. Ivy, however, is captivated, and the teacher is the only one to encourage her artistic talent. Yet as Ivys devotion grows, odd reports begin to circulate that Mademoiselle Blanc has unusual powers.She has been glimpsed in the garden picking flowers whilst also teaching a class, leaving the school but stalking the halls at the same time. A book in another pupils possession tells of a teacher overseas who had a doppelgänger, their sinister powers driving pupils to hysteria. Soon Ivys fellow students are convinced Mademoiselle Blanc Emily White can appear in two places at once.As increasingly strange rumours abound, Ivys obsession spins out of control, and with Emily Whites future at stake, she will do anything to keep her only friend.