The release date for the English version of 'Catherine House' by
Elisabeth Thomas is May 2020. If you enjoy this novel, it is available for buy as a paperback from Barnes & Noble or Indigo, as an ebook on the Amazon Kindle store, or as an audiobook on Audible.
A tale about a young undergraduate with a deadly curiosity whose disobedience leads her to uncover a startling mystery concerning an elite group of students and the sinister reality hiding beneath her school's allure.
The home is in the woods, and you are in it.
The house is in you and you are in the house...
There is no other higher education institution like Catherine House. Nestled in the rural Pennsylvanian woods, this reformist liberal arts institution, known for its highly selective admissions, experimental curriculum, and impressive endowment, has yielded some of the world's most brilliant minds, including presidents, judges of the Supreme Court, prize-winning authors, and inventors. For the fortunate few chosen, there is no charge for room and board. However, there is a cost to accepting. Students must spend three years, including summers, totally cut off from the outside world at the House. Everything needs to be left behind, including their clothes, music, TV, and friends. The institution offers its alumni the chance to become anything and anybody they want, as well as a future of immense power and prestige.
Ines is one of the new students this year. She comes expecting hard intellectual discipline instead of fuzzy nights of parties, narcotics, vicious friends, and dangerous men. Instead, she finds an atmosphere of approved partying. Within the imposing black iron gates of Catherine, pupils are encouraged to explore, broaden their horizons, and discover their identity and position by the mysterious director of the school, Viktória.
Ines views Catherine as the closest thing she has ever had to a home, and she quickly befriends Baby, her serious but bashful roommate. However, because of the peculiar procedures followed by the House, this haven of faded leather and worn velvet begins to resemble a golden jail. Additionally, Ines starts to worry that the school, with all of its gaudy splendor, revered past, cutting-edge theories, and controlled decadence, might be concealing a sinister agenda linked to a close-knit group of students chosen to study its most intriguing and promising curriculum, after Baby's compulsive need for acceptance ends tragically.