THE INSTANT BESTSELLER • An indelible portrait of girls the women they become and that moment
in life when everything can go horribly wrong NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The
Washington Post • NPR • The Guardian • Entertainment Weekly • San Francisco Chronicle •
Financial Times • Esquire • Newsweek • Vogue • Glamour • People • The Huffington Post • Elle •
Harper's Bazaar • Time Out • BookPage • Publishers Weekly • Slate Northern California during
the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of summer a lonely and thoughtful teenager Evie
Boyd sees a group of girls in the park and is immediately caught by their freedom their
careless dress their dangerous aura of abandon. Soon Evie is in thrall to Suzanne a
mesmerizing older girl and is drawn into the circle of a soon-to-be infamous cult and the man
who is its charismatic leader. Hidden in the hills their sprawling ranch is eerie and run down
but to Evie it is exotic thrilling charged-a place where she feels desperate to be accepted.
As she spends more time away from her mother and the rhythms of her daily life and as her
obsession with Suzanne intensifies Evie does not realize she is coming closer and closer to
unthinkable violence. Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • Finalist for the National
Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award • Shortlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel
Prize • The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • Emma Cline-One of Granta's Best of
Young American Novelists Praise for The Girls Spellbinding . . . a seductive and arresting
coming-of-age story.-The New York Times Book Review Extraordinary . . . Debut novels like this
are rare indeed.-The Washington Post Hypnotic.-The Wall Street Journal Gorgeous.-Los Angeles
Times Savage.-The Guardian Astonishing.-The Boston Globe Superbly written.-James Wood The New
Yorker Intensely consuming.-Richard Ford A spectacular achievement.-Lucy Atkins The Times
Thrilling.-Jennifer Egan Compelling and startling.-The Economist
