Witchcraft for Wayward Girls

In this twisted, unforgettable horror novel, a group of young girls turn to a dark, ancient magic. From Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of How to Sell a Haunted House and The Final Girl Support Group.

They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.

And where every moment of their waking day is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them.

Fifteen-year-old Fern arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified and alone. There, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament.

There's Rose, a hippie who insists she’s going to keep her baby and escape to a commune. Zinnia, a budding musician who plans to marry her baby’s father. And Holly, barely fourteen, mute and pregnant by no-one-knows-who.

Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely.

There’s always a price to be paid . . . and it’s usually paid in blood.

Review

This book is so twisted and smart . . . As soon as I finished, I wanted to start all over again -- Catriona Ward, author of The Last House on Needless Street and Nowhere Burning

Terrifying, darkly funny, moving, immersive, and deeply relevant– a page-turner that will keep you up until one in the morning -- Simone St. James, New York Times bestselling author of Murder Road

There’s spells, there’s witches, and then there’s the magic Grady Hendrix conjures up in this amazing novel -- Stephen Graham Jones, New York Times bestselling author of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

Superb . . . Hendrix’s genius as a horror writer is his ability to develop complex, human-scale emotional arcs . . . At turns frightening, anxiety-producing, infuriating, beautiful and sad, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls is a perfect horror for our imperfect age -- New York Times

An engrossing, compelling read -- The Guardian

A chillingly addictive Southern Gothic tale -- Cosmopolitan

This visceral tale of oppression, resistance and consequences provides chilly horrors -- Daily Mail

This is Satan's School for Girls or The Initiation of Sarah . . . horror, social comment and wicked black humour -- Kim Newman, author of Anno Dracula

Stunning, full of dread and heartache and unforgettable characters. It’s impossible to read this book and not be touched by it. What a triumph! -- Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author of The House of Last Resort and Road of Bones

A morally complex and genuinely haunting and moving tale. I couldn't put it down once I started -- Paul Tremblay, bestselling author of The Cabin at the End of the World

About the Author

Grady Hendrix is a New York Times bestselling novelist and screenwriter who owns too many paperbacks and not enough shelves. He's the author of How to Sell a Haunted House, The Final Girl Support Group, The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, and many more, including Paperbacks from Hell, a history of the horror paperback boom of the seventies and eighties that won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Nonfiction. (All the paperbacks are for "research" and he needs them.) His books have sold over three million copies and have been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives in New York City and will die there, too, probably crushed to death beneath piles of those paperbacks.