Wilder Girls

Something. Way out in the white-dark. Between the trees, moving where the thickets swarm. You can see it from the roof, the way the brush bends around it as it rustles to the ocean.
That size, it must be a coyote, one of the big ones hitting shoulder high. Teeth that fit like knives in the palm of my hand. I know because I found one once, the end of it just poking through the fence. Took it back and hid it under my bed.
One more crash through the brush and then the stillness again. Across the roof deck Byatt lowers her gun, rests it on the railing. Road clear.
I keep mine up, just in case, keep the sight raised to my left eye. My other eye s dead, gone dark in a flare-up. Lid fused shut, something growing underneath.
It s like that, with all of us here. Sick, strange, and we don t know why. Things bursting out of us, bits missing and pieces sloughing off, and then we harden and smooth over.
Through the sight, noon sun bleaching the world,     I can see the woods stretching out to the island s edge, the ocean beyond. Pines bristling thick like always, rising high above the house. Here and there, gaps where the oak and birch have shed their leaves, but most of the canopy is woven tight, needles stiff with frost. Only the radio antenna breaking through, useless now the signal s out.
Up the road someone yells, and out of the trees, there s Boat Shift coming home. It s only a few who can make the trip, all the way across the island to where the Navy delivers rations and clothes at the pier the ferries used to come and go from. The rest of us stay behind the fence, pray they make it home safe.
The tallest, Ms. Welch, stops at the gate and fumbles with the lock until at last, the gate swings open, and Boat Shift come stumbling in, cheeks red from the cold. All three of them back and all three of them bent under the weight of the cans and the meats and the sugar cubes. Welch turns to shut the gate behind her. Barely five years past the

Rory Power grew up in Boston, received her undergraduate degree at Middlebury College, and went on to earn an MA in prose fiction from the University of East Anglia. She lives in Massachusetts. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Wilder Girls and Burn Our Bodies Down. To learn more about Rory, go to itsrorypower.com and follow @itsrorypower on Twitter and Instagram.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!

A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year

"Power's evocative, haunting, and occasionally gruesome debut will challenge readers to ignore its bewitching presence."  Booklist, starred review

 "This gritty, lush debut chronicling psychological and environmental tipping points...weaves a chilling narrative that disrupts readers' expectations through an expertly crafted, slow-burn reveal of the deadly consequences of climate change....Part survival thriller, part post-apocalyptic romance, and part ecocritical feminist manifesto, a staggering gut punch of a book."  Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"An ode to empowering women and a testament to the strength of female bonds....Far more than just an unsettling horror story, this powerful debut novel about a strange disease at an all-girls boarding school explores female empowerment, friendship and survival with tenacity and brilliance."  Shelf Awareness, starred review

Electric prose, compelling relationships, and visceral horror illuminate Power s incisive debut...[and  its] environmental and feminist themes are resonant, particularly the immeasurable costs of experimentation on female bodies, and the power of female solidarity and resilience amid ecological and political turmoil. Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Tightly coiled narration moves between quietly reserved to vividly but coldly detailed, doubling the horror."  Bulletin

"Your new favorite book."  Cosmopolitan

Everything about this thrilling, unnerving debut will make you want to immediately read it. For fans of Mindy McGinnis and Gillian French. Paste

Wilder Girls is so sharp and packs so much emotion in such wise ways.