240 pages | Trade Paperback

From the author ofThe Seed Collectorscomes a darkly comic take on power, privilege, and the pressure put on young women to fit inand be thinat their all-girls boarding school

Its already the second week of term when Natasha, the daughter of a Russian oligarch, arrives at a vast English country house for her first day of boarding school. She soon discovers that the headmaster gives special treatment to the skinniest girls, and Tash finds herself thrown into the schools unfamiliar, moneyed world of fierce pecking orders, eating disorders, and Instagram angst.

The halls echo with the story of Princess Augusta, the White Lady whose portraitsfeaturing a hypnotizing black diamondhang everywhere and whose ghost is said to haunt the dorms. Its said that she fell in love with a commoner and drowned herself in the lake. But the girls dont really know anything about the woman she was, much less anything about one another. When Tashs friend Bianca mysteriously vanishes, the routines of the school seem darker and more alien than ever before. Tash must try to stay aliveand sanewhile she uncovers whats really going on.

Darkly hilarious, Oligarchy is Heathers for the digital age, a Prep populated with the teenage children of the European elite, exploring youth, power, and affluence. Scarlett Thomas captures the lives of these privileged young women, in all their triviality and magnitude, seeking acceptance and control in a manipulative world.