A Great and Terrible Beauty (Gemma Doyle Trilogy, #1)

by Libba Bray

3.86 of 5 stars 50 ratings • 11 reviews • 88 shelved
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The first book in the critically acclaimed New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestselling Gemma Doyle trilogy, the exhilarating and haunting saga from the author of The Diviners series and Going Bovine.

It’s 1895, and after the suicide of her mother, 16-year-old Gemma Doyle is shipped off from the life she knows in India to Spence, a proper boarding school in England. Lonely, guilt-ridden, and prone to visions of the future that have an uncomfortable habit of coming true, Gemma’s reception there is a chilly one. 

To make things worse, she’s been followed by a mysterious young Indian man, a man sent to watch her. But why? What is her destiny? And what will her entanglement with Spence’s most powerful girls—and their foray into the spiritual world—lead to? 

“A delicious, elegant gothic.”—PW, Starred 

“Shivery with both passion and terror.”—Kirkus Reviews 

"Compulsively readable." --VOYA 

A New York Times Bestseller
A Publishers Weekly Bestseller
A Book Sense Bestseller
BBYA (ALA/YALSA Best Book for Young Adults)
Iowa High School Book Award
Garden State Teen Book Award
Pennsylvania Young Reader’s Choice Award

  • ISBN10 0385732317
  • ISBN13 9780385732314
  • Publish Date 22 March 2005 (first published 1 January 2003)
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country US
  • Imprint Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group