Set in an alternate Victorian England where mediums control the dead, sixteen-year-old autistic transgender boy Silas must expose a power-hungry secret society while confined to a cruel finishing school designed to turn him into the perfect wife.

A blood-soaked and nauseating triumph that cuts like a scalpel and reads like your darkest nightmare. New York Times bestselling author Andrew Joseph White returns with the transgressive gothic horror of our time! Mors vincit omnia. Death conquers all. London, 1883. The Veil between the living and dead has thinned. Violet-eyed mediums commune with spirits under the watchful eye of the Royal Speaker Society, and sixteen-year-old trans, autistic Silas Bell would rather rip out his violet eyes than become an obedient Speaker wife. After a failed attempt to escape an arranged marriage, Silas is diagnosed with Veil sickness?a mysterious disease sending violet-eyed women into madness?and shipped away to Braxtons Finishing School and Sanitorium. When the ghosts of missing students start begging Silas for help, he decides to reach into Braxtons innards and expose its guts to the world?so long as the school doesnt break him first. Featuring an autistic trans protagonist in a historical setting, Andrew Joseph Whites much-anticipated sophomore novel does not back down from exposing the violence of the patriarchy and the harm inflicted on trans youth who are forced into conformity.