Eliza and Her Monsters

She lives in a School that breathes: the corridors calmly expand and contract. In the showers, blood gushes from the taps. Some students change: one became porcelain, another turned into cardboard, a third grew tentacles. The others don’t change—and they are much scarier. No one remembers how they got here. No one can leave. She is a cat—the cat’s mask has grown onto her face. She doesn’t have eyes anymore. She is strong; she is fast. She has forgotten her real name. Everyone calls her Kot.

And when some ominous someone starts killing the students one by one, she alone is able to find out who is doing it and stop the slaughter. But to do that, she must remember what happened before all of them ended up in the School.

Francesca Zappia wrote a frightening story—a detective and a mystical thriller mixed with a coming-of-age tale—that fans of Karen M. McManus, E. Lockhart, and Marika Nijkamp will love. This is a story about cruelty. A story about fragility. A story about friendship, love, pain, violence, and masks. It’s a story about bullying. In Russian for the first time!