Megan Abbott Releases New Novel: *The Fever* – available at Square Books in Oxford

Megan Abbott wrote one of the most memorable and beloved books of 2012. Called “deft, intelligent, and enthralling” by Kate Atkinson and “spectacular” by Chelsea Cain in The New York Times Book Review, her novel Dare Me — a chilling story of backstabbing cheerleaders and adolescent rivalries — won the hearts of critics and fans. Dare Me was nominated for a Best Novel of the Year Anthony Award and the Crime Writers Association Steel Dagger, was Gillian Flynn‘s Holiday Book Picks selection for NBC-TV’s Today show, and made many 2012 best-of booklists.

Now, we’re thrilled to share with you Megan’s spectacular new novel, The Fever, released June 17, 2014 — about a mysterious epidemic that sends an entire town into pandemonium as it systematically infects one teenage girl after another, all from the same high school.

In the idyllic community of Dryden, Tom Nash is a popular high school teacher and the father of two teens: Eli, a hockey star and girl magnet, and Deenie, a diligent student with a close-knit group of friends — who are all horrified one day in class when Deenie’s best friend, Lise, is struck by a terrifying, brutal, and unexplained seizure. As Lise clings to life in the hospital, the seizures systematically infect more teenage girls, one by one, sending the entire town into terrified, questioning chaos. Is there a dangerous virus at work? Is it something in the school itself? Are the girls faking it? Who or what is to blame — and who will be next?

Loosely inspired by the true story of the nationally reported 2012 purported “mass hysteria” outbreak in Le Roy, New York, The Fever — one of Entertainment Weekly‘s 2014 “14 Reads That Are Worth the Wait” — is a haunting, thought-provoking page-turner that examines the powers of desire, guilt, secrets, and fear. It’s at once entrancing and disturbing, and readers will not be able to put it down until the very last page.

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Megan Abbott is the Edgar®-winning author of six previous novels: Queenpin, The Song Is You, Die a Little, Bury Me Deep, and The End of Everything. Her latest novel, Dare Me, was chosen by Entertainment Weekly and Amazon as one of the Best Books of 2012 and is soon to be a major motion picture.

Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Salon, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Believer, Los Angeles Review of Books, Detroit Noir, Best Crime and Mystery Stories of the Year, Storyglossia, Queens Noir and The Speed Chronicles.

Born in the Detroit area, she graduated from the University of Michigan and received her Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University. She has taught at NYU, the State University of New York and the New School University. In 2013, she will serve as the John Grisham Writer in Residence at Ole Miss.

She is also the author of a nonfiction book, The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir, and the editor of A Hell of a Woman, an anthology of female crime fiction. She has been nominated for many awards, including three Edgar® Awards, Hammett Prize, the Macavity, Anthony and Barry Awards, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Pushcart Prize.

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Links:

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Interviews with Megan Abbott: