“A compulsively readable twist on the old-fashioned school story.” —The Guardian

“Chilling. . . . Brimming with spiritualism and sensuality, this neo-gothic story navigates the terrain between life and death, and between childhood and adulthood.” —The New Yorker

“Spoiled Milk is a dirty little jewel of a novel, as thrilling as it is unsettling, as moving as it is frequently horrifying. Curran writes with incredible precision on fear, desire and the insidiousness of authority and empire. A truly impeccable novel.” ―Julia Armfield, author of Our Wives Under the Sea

“The haunted lesbian boarding school horror show we always wanted. From its dread-inducing opening to that breathtaking finale, Spoiled Milk is brimming with images that we’ll carry into way too many nightmares. Avery Curran is a witch.” ―Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta, authors of Feast While You Can

“Spoiled Milk is a post-war fable about the death of Empire and a lesbian phantasmagoria, but it's also one of the most well-executed pieces of horror writing I've ever read. It is a terrifically nasty, loving, heretical, filthy look at the boarding school story; Avery Curran puts the entire genre in its grave and then invites the reader to view its exhumed corpse. This book destroyed me.” —Tamsyn Muir, bestselling author of The Locked Tomb series

“Something wicked oozes through Briarley School for girls. Has the slave trade, spiritualism or sapphic desire unleashed it? Whichever way it’s slick and rotten fun. Get ready for your new literary pash.”—Clare Polland, author of Delphi

“Pure class with a delicious touch of high kitsch, Spoiled Milk is gory, tender, sexy, wry, and just so exquisitely written. It says as much about first love as it does masticated limbs, about Empire as it does ectoplasm—read it and be enthralled.” —Krystelle Bamford, bestselling author of Idle Grounds

“Seances, ectoplasm, soft and furious kisses, a love triangle with a ghost, all of it hurtling towards a hauntingly beautiful finale. Spoiled Milk is the book of my dreams and my nightmares.” —Maggie Thrash, author of Honor Girl and Rainbow Black

“Step into the halls of Briarley, where nothing is to be trusted and the only thing more frightening than death is having to live long enough to grow up. Both darkly funny and genuinely harrowing, Spoiled Milk is the boarding school novel my spooky heart has been waiting for. Avery Curran has written an absolute knockout.” —Allison Epstein, author of Fagin the Thief

"Is there a more atmospheric gothic setting than the cloistered halls of an English girls’ boarding school on a rotting country estate? Spoiled Milk’s Briarley harbours a sapphic hothouse of heady spiritualism and bitter, shifting loyalties as its girls grapple with the shocking death of their charismatic classmate Violet. Curran’s chilling prose offers a slow-burn horror story in the vein of Daphne Du Maurier, deepening the dread as the girls careen toward a bloodcurdling cry of a climax."
—Margaret DeRosia, author of Eight Strings

"Dread crawls steadily and inexorably throughout the pages of this thrillingly creepy novel, culminating in an ending that is thoroughly unsettling and – as in the best Gothic fiction – inevitable. Trust is an illusion, and safety is only ever fleeting. No one is safe, not even the reader." —Suzette Mayr, author of the Giller prize-winning novel, The Sleeping Car Porter

"A nauseatingly good work of lesbian horror where nobody comes out unscathed, reader included. What rot!!" —Grace Curtis, author of Floating Hotel

"Spoiled Milk is like the most delicious kind of treat: midnight, clandestine, and best eaten with your hands. When the favourite girl at Briarley falls to her untimely death, an inexorable chain of events is set in motion. Avery Curran's spellbinding Gothic debut is sinister and playful in equal measure, and builds to a roaring crescendo of repressed rage and queer desire. The coming-of-age novel I wish I had." —Ally Wilkes, author of All the White Spaces

"Spoiled Milk asks what would happen if the acolytes of Muriel Spark's Brodie set were left to fend for themselves in a Shirley Jackson novel—and the answer is this deliciously dark gothic debut from Avery Curran. I adored Curran's twisted take on the campus novel." —Lindsay Lynch, bestselling author of Do Tell

"Lush and haunting. . . . Briarley contains echoes of classic literary gothic manors like Thornfield Hall and Hill House and the narrative does a good job teasing out the dark history of slavery and empire packed into its bricks and mortar. On the way to Briarley’s bloody dissolution, Curran delivers a chilling tale of repressed passion, queer awakening, and the corrosive power of silence. It’s an impressive start." —Publishers Weekly

“Queerness weaves through the novel like an inversion of the rot spreading through the school. Though the book is steeped in the realities of the time period, Curran wonderfully shows how the girl’s burgeoning sexuality and relationships provide them with a complicated refuge from the dangers within and beyond Briarley. The use of foreshadowing effectively builds tension and dread . . . the novel’s true strength is exploring the complex relationships among the girls—both living and dead—and the unknowns of the world. A queer, eerie debut.” —Kirkus Reviews

“The queer subtext of the classic boarding-school novel is burst open like so many rotten, maggot-filled apples in this debut. . . It's worth a read if any combination of the words ‘yearning lesbian Gothic haunted-house body horror’ gets you going.” —The Cut

“With tenderness, Curran quietly weaves elements of young queer love into this narrative of mystery. . . . Curran does not aim to dispel secrets about gender or sexuality, but respects the spoken and unspoken dynamics they produce between teenage girls. Sightings of the supernatural become a metaphor for the nuanced growing pains of queerness, but also a criticism of those who pervert religious ideas to produce cultures of shame.” —The Skinny

“Spoiled Milk nails the [boarding school mystery] genre with its Picnic at Hanging Rock vibes and cool girl sensibility. . . . Eerie, atmospheric and lyrically driven, Spoiled Milk may be the most intriguing gothic of the year.” —CrimeReads

“Lush, unsettling and oddly peaceful in its feral rhythms, Spoiled Milk lingers in the mind like something decadent that’s been left out too long; sweet at first, then unmistakably sour.” —The Seattle Times

“Armed with a strong understanding of [the] rich and miserable history [of English boarding schools], Curran injects fresh blood into the traditionally rigid paradigms of English girlhood narratives. . . . Curran’s style engages with the reader’s own history; it feels strikingly like a conversation, perhaps even a confession, that resonates with the present. It is a refreshingly self-aware debut, built on a rich tradition of gothic cultural capital as well as history, and a must-read for boarding school fiction junkies.” —Reactor