A Great and Terrible Beauty (Abridged)

by Libba Bray Narrated by Joanna Wyatt

Overview

The first book in the critically acclaimed*New York Times, USA Today, and*Publishers Weekly*bestselling Gemma Doyle trilogy, the exhilarating and haunting saga*from the author of The Diviners series and*Going Bovine.

It's 1895, and after the suicide of her mother, 16-year-old Gemma Doyle is shipped off from the life she knows in India to Spence, a proper boarding school in England. Lonely, guilt-ridden, and prone to visions of the future that have an uncomfortable habit of coming true, Gemma's reception there is a chilly one.

To make things worse, she's been followed by a mysterious young Indian man, a man sent to watch her. But why? What is her destiny? And what will her entanglement with Spence's most powerful girls-and their foray into the spiritual world-lead to?

“A delicious, elegant gothic.”-PW, Starred*

“Shivery with both passion and terror.”-Kirkus Reviews*

"Compulsively readable." --VOYA*

A New York Times Bestseller
A Publishers Weekly Bestseller
A Book Sense Bestseller
BBYA (ALA/YALSA Best Book for Young Adults)
Iowa High School Book Award
Garden State Teen Book Award
Pennsylvania Young Reader's Choice Award

Editorial Reviews

JUNE/JULY 05 - AudioFile

Gemma, who has grown up in colonial India, returns to be educated in the ways of being a proper young woman at boarding school in Victorian London--but India might not be as far away as she thinks. The story has a pervasive, if contrived, atmosphere of lush sensuality--there’s a little magic, a little romance, and a lot of intrigue. Listeners who are most familiar with Jo Wyatt as Lyra in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series will be impressed by her range and characterizations here. That the story sometimes feels choppy or abrupt may be the fault of the abridgment, and the ending seems ripe for a sequel. J.M.D. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

JUNE/JULY 05 - AudioFile

Gemma, who has grown up in colonial India, returns to be educated in the ways of being a proper young woman at boarding school in Victorian London--but India might not be as far away as she thinks. The story has a pervasive, if contrived, atmosphere of lush sensuality--there’s a little magic, a little romance, and a lot of intrigue. Listeners who are most familiar with Jo Wyatt as Lyra in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series will be impressed by her range and characterizations here. That the story sometimes feels choppy or abrupt may be the fault of the abridgment, and the ending seems ripe for a sequel. J.M.D. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169293715
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	12/09/2003
Series:	Gemma Doyle Trilogy Series , #1
Edition description:	Abridged

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