Look Out For … The Reformatory by Tananarive Due

“With her latest novel, Due presents a relevant and horrifying story of a fight for survival and hope in the face of terrible racial adversity.”

After kicking the son of the largest landowner in town, twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr. is sentenced to the Gracetown School for Boys. Even though the attack was in defense of his older sister, this is the Jim Crow South, and the school, called The Reformatory, will be a gruelling time for Robbie.

Robbie’s talent, seeing ghosts, was once a comfort to him after his mother died. But now, seeing these haints changes everything. Boys have gone missing at the school, yet the haints show Robbie things that are even worse. With his friends, Redbone and Blue, Robbie learns how to survive at the school. And Robbie’s sister Gloria is rallying family and anyone with connections in Florida to get Robbie out of The Reformatory before it’s too late.

Why we’re excited this book:

Readers of horror and speculative fiction should be very familiar with the work of Tananarive Due. The author of My Soul to Keep, The Between, The Living Blood, The Good House, and Ghost Summer among others, Due is the executive producer and writer for Horror Noire on SHUDDER. When not writing, Due teaches Black Horror and Afrofuturism at UCLA, and cohosts the Lifewriting: Write for Your Life! podcast with her husband Steven Barnes. With her latest novel, Due presents a relevant and horrifying story of a fight for survival and hope in the face of terrible racial adversity. Joe Hill (Heart-Shaped Box, NOS4A2) says: “The Reformatory is a masterpiece—a new American classic of the uncanny. I was gripped from the first lines to the catch-your-breath desperation of the final pages. Even in the tale’s grimmest moments, Tananarive Due insists on the almost supernatural power of simple kindness. You have to read this book.”, and Kirkus Reviews says: “A vividly realized page-turner, which is at once an ingenious ghost story, a white-knuckle adventure, and an illuminating if infuriating look back at a shameful period in American jurisprudence.”