Design by Rich Deas
★ “Cerebral, atmospheric, and genuinely unsettling—science thriller gold.”
Kirkus
“Full of twists and lightly laced with romance…will have readers on the edge of their seats.”
Booklist
“A sharply intelligent, darkly fascinating academic thriller about unraveling the hard truths of who you are and who you want to be – and the final twist made me gasp out loud.”
Andrew Joseph White, New York Times-bestselling and award-winning author of Compound Fracture
“Clever and thoroughly compelling, this is the perfect combination of academia, mystery, and darkly thrilling twists.”
CG Drews, New York Times bestselling author of Don’t Let The Forest In
“S. Hati delivers a dark academia-esque thriller that trades spells and secret societies for mutated creatures, secret experiments, and the haunting price of genius.”
Kalynn Baron, New York Times-bestselling author of You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight
“Weaves science and mystery into a twisty thrill ride.”
Megan Davidhizar, author of Silent Sister
“A uniquely twisty take on academic thrillers… stews in the timely horrors of deprioritized ethics in scientific advancements.”
Racquel Marie, bestselling author of If We Survive This
“Perfectly captures the unsettling feeling of a lab after hours, imbuing it with monstrous creatures, twisted schemes, and a heroine who grabs you by the heart strings and doesn’t let go.”
Elias Cold, author of The Duke Steals Hearts and Other Body Parts
“Seamlessly weaves humor, mystery, and scientific expertise into an unforgettable narrative.”
Ana Davis, author of My Keen Knife
“The Secret History meets Frankenstein and absolutely brilliant.”
Sian Gilbert, author of She Started It and I Did Warn Her
“A fresh and thrilling triumph of dark academia.”
Channelle Desamours, author of Needy Little Things
About the Book
An ambitious teen enrolls at an elite science institute in Morbid Curiosities, a young adult thriller from author S. Hati.
When the Institute’s invitation arrived at my doorstep, it felt like it had been inked in my blood, sweat, and tears.
Aarya’s life plan has been set for as long as she can remember: finish high school with a bang, attend the best college she can get into, then land a prestigious biology research job. Her ticket to this dream is a one-year program at the Elizabethan Institute, the preeminent organization for life sciences in the United States, currently on the cusp of revealing a major project that could transform the worlds of biology and medicine.
But as Aarya tries to settle in to a school with sky-high academic expectations and research cloaked in mystery, it becomes clear that someone doesn’t want her there. As the scholarship student surrounded by rich, cutthroat peers who seem all too willing to torment her, she never expected to make friends, but the notes warning her to run rattle her to her core. She finds an ally in Sofia, a mysterious girl who claims to be the subject of closed-door experiments at the Institute and begs for Aarya’s help in figuring out what the Institute is really working on.
As rumors of mutated flora and fauna in the nearby city circulate and a murder investigation rocks the Institute, Aarya will have to navigate Sofia’s growing paranoia and her own increasingly unreliable memory to determine which classmates she can trust—and which would rather see her dead.
Playlist
Content Warnings
Death, medical anxiety, blood, non-consensual human experimentation.
S. Hati 