Sizzling Summer Reads May 27, 2012

There will be no MediaMonday discussion today in #litchat as we observe Memorial Day.

On Wednesday and Friday of this week we’ll discuss Sizzling Summer Reads with previews of this summer’s hot fiction. Joining us as guest host on Friday, June 1, is Jennifer Miller, author of The Year of the Gadfly.

In The Year of the Gadfly, Miller takes us inside the hallowed halls of prestigious prep school Mariana Academy. Storied, fiercely competitive Mariana Academy was founded with a serious honor code; its reputation has been unsullied for decades. Now a long-dormant secret society, Prisom’s Party, threatens its placid halls with vigilante justice, exposing students and teachers alike for even the most minor infraction. Iris Dupont, a budding journalist whose only confidant is the chainsmoking specter of Edward R. Murrow, feels sure she can break into the ranks of The Devil’s Advocate, the Party’s underground newspaper, and there uncover the source of its blackmail schemes and vilifying rumors. Some involve the school’s new science teacher, who also seems to be investigating the Party. Others point to an albino student who left school abruptly ten years before, never to return. And everything connects to a rare book called Marvelous Species. But the truth comes with its own dangers, and Iris is torn between her allegiances, her reporter’s instinct, and her own troubled past.

The Year of the Gadfly is an exhilarating journey of double-crosses, deeply buried secrets, and the lifelong reverberations of losing someone you love. Following in the tradition of classic prep school novels like A Separate Peace, Prep, and The Secret History, it reminds us how these years haunt our lives forever.

Jennifer Miller, author of Inheriting the Holy Land: An American’s Search for Hope in the Middle East, holds an undergraduate degree from Brown and graduate degrees in journalism and fiction from Columbia. Her work has been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Marie Claire, the Christian Science Monitor, The Daily Beast, Salon, and others. She is a native of Washington, D.C. and now lives in Brooklyn. The Year of the Gadflly is her first novel.

Follow Jennifer Miller on Twitter: @propjen.

Watch the book video trailer: The Year of the Gadfly