Ninth House (Alex Stern, 1)

The mesmerizing adult debut from Leigh Bardugo, a tale of power, privilege, dark magic, and murder set among the Ivy League elite

Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug-dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. In fact, by age twenty, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most prestigious universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her?

Still searching for answers, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. Their eight windowless “tombs” are the well-known haunts of the rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street’s biggest players. But their occult activities are more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive. They tamper with forbidden magic. They raise the dead. And, sometimes, they prey on the living.

An Amazon Best Book of October 2019: Leigh Bardugo made her mark writing bestselling young adult fantasy, but now she’s doing something a little different with Ninth House, her first adult novel. Bardugo uses Yale’s secret societies—their hidden rituals and the power of membership—to create the perfect setting for a story where elitism and the occult are intertwined. In Ninth House we meet Alex Stern, a young woman with nothing left to lose, who is given a strange second chance at a different life—as a freshman at Yale. Alex has been selected to attend not for her academic achievement, but rather to perform a dangerous task for which she is uniquely qualified: finding out who among the secret societies is resurrecting ancient dark magic. Ninth House is an epic read–sharp, dark, and incredibly atmospheric, with a gutsy protagonist and a conclusion that leaves the reader eager for more. –Seira Wilson, Amazon Book Review