Melanie Abrams is the author of a new novel Meadowlark (Little A). Her novel Playing (Grove Atlantic) has been acquired in Italy, France, Germany, India, and Israel. She teaches writing at UC Berkeley and is married to the writer Vikram Chandra. They live with their children in Oakland, CA.At CrimeReads she tagged seven novels about crimes in communes, cults, and other alternative communities, including:
The Illness Lesson by Clare BeamsRead about another entry on the list.
This dark edgy novel is a triple threat: part historical fiction, part feminist thriller, part supernatural fable. Samuel Hood is the founder ofa school devoted to teaching girls that they are capable of more than just domesticity. His daughter, Caroline, a teacher at the school, is skeptical of the experiment, and her unease only grows when Eliza shows up. Not only is Eliza the daughter of a man who fictionalized Samuel’s original utopian experiment in a popular novel, but she’s also the first to develop strange physical symptoms. Then Caroline falls ill. There are three utopian communities at play here, each creepier than the last.
The Illness Lesson is among Molly Odintz's fourteen top crime novels in the time of plague.
The Page 69 Test: The Illness Lesson.
--Marshal Zeringue
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