Books: "The Swallows” By Lisa Lutz

The Swallows
By Lisa Lutz
Ballantine Hardcover; $27.00; available this Tuesday, August 13

Lisa Lutz is the New York Times bestselling, Alex Award-winning author of the Spellman Files series, as well as the novels Heads You Lose (with David Hayward), How to Start a Fire, and The Passenger. She has also written for film and TV, including HBO's "The Deuce." She lives part-time in New York’s Hudson Valley.


Lutz's newest book, The Swallows, is a provocative novel about a teacher at a New England prep school who ignites a gender war, with deadly consequences, among her students. Think “Dead Poets Society” but for the modern, #MeToo era, as well as a a thrilling tale of revenge.

When Alex Witt, the new creative writing teacher at Stonebridge Academy, assigns a simple writing prompt for her class to answer several questions about yourself, the students’ answers raise disturbing questions of their own.

Alex quickly discovers there is more going on at the school than the faculty wants to see. She learns about The Ten, the students at the top of the school’s social hierarchy, and their connection to something called The Darkroom.

Unable to remain a passive observer, Alex inspires the girls who’ve started to question the school’s “boys will be boys” attitude and incites a resistance that becomes a movement on campus. But just as the movement is gaining momentum, Alex attracts the attention of an unknown enemy who knows a little too much about her—including what brought her to Stonebridge in the first place.

As the school's secrets begin to trickle out, a boys-versus-girls skirmish turns into an all-out war, with deeply personal, and possibly fatal, consequences for everyone involved. Lisa Lutz's blistering, timely tale shows us what can happen when silence wins out over decency for too long, and why the scariest threat of all might be the idea that, sooner or later, girls will be girls.

AUTHOR APPEARANCE: 

Wednesday, August 14th from 6:30 – 8:30 PM (Doors open at 6:30; Discussion begins at 7:00 PM) - Burrow House, 125 Greene Street, New York, NY 10012