From a young atheist who hopes to catch the goodness of the Christian boy she dates, to a girl who decides to have her first sexual experience with a much older man whom she finds both erotic and repellent, the protagonists in Krista Bridge’s subtle and resonant stories confront the elusiveness of true connection and the inevitability of restlessness and dissatisfaction. These stories have at their centre the unsettling dynamics of family, the tenderness and cruelty of romance and friendship, and the troubling ties by which we are bound to each other. Like the people who populate them, these stories are by turns moody and introspective, sad and funny, and all are steeped in the longing that defines our search for that archetypal home. Most importantly, they reveal a writer with a beguiling sensibility, uncommon insight and a voice of promise.

A gripping debut teeming with drama and scathing insight into the world of an all-girl private high school.For years, Audrey Brindle has dreamed of attending George Eliot Academy, the school where her mother, Ruth, has taught for a decade. But when she is finally admitted, she discovers a place of sly bullying and ferocious intolerance. Ruth, meanwhile, finds her world upended by the arrival of a new teacher, Henry Winter.An acutely observed exploration of ambition, betrayal, and cruelty, The Eliot Girls deftly explores the intimacies and injustices of privileged female adolescence and the relationship of a mother and daughter for whom life will never be the same.