In Danvers, Massachusetts, high school senior Colleen attends a private Catholic girls’ school where she and many of her friends are stressed out waiting to hear from colleges. Then a number of her classmates begin falling ill with an array of seemingly unrelated symptoms. One loses her hair. Another is paralyzed. Her friend Anjali begins coughing up metal. Some parents are up in arms. The media goes into a frenzy. A famous environmental activist shows up determined to prove toxic waste beneath the school’s playing field is at fault. Meanwhile, Colleen — who remains symptom-free and whose parents are archly skeptical and grounded — has been given a 62.5 on a history quiz. Her only hope of maintaining her GPA and staying in the running for valedictorian is an extra credit assignment on The Crucible . The primary narrative of this compelling novel stays focused on the contemporary story set in 2012. But periodic interceding chapters, set in Salem Village (situated where Danvers is today) in 1706, feature Ann Putnam, one of the accusers during the Salem Witch Trials, telling her minister the story of deception and hysteria in which she got caught up more than a decade earlier. Howe smartly establishes Colleen as a likable and level-headed main character, which makes it all the more shocking when Colleen herself begins having intense headaches and blackouts. An intriguing novel is followed by an informative author’s note discussing the mysterious illnesses among girls in LeRoy, New York, in 2012 — events that inspired this novel — and about conversion disorder, a type of stress response in which the physical symptoms are very real. (Age 14 and older)

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane comes a chilling mystery--Prep meets The Crucible.

It's senior year at St. Joan's Academy, and school is a pressure cooker. College applications, the battle for valedictorian, deciphering boys' texts: Through it all, Colleen Rowley and her friends are expected to keep it together. Until they can't.

First it's the school's queen bee, Clara Rutherford, who suddenly falls into uncontrollable tics in the middle of class. Her mystery illness quickly spreads to her closest clique of friends, then more students and symptoms follow: seizures, hair loss, violent coughing fits. St. Joan's buzzes with rum∨ rumor blossoms into full-blown panic.

Soon the media descends on Danvers, Massachusetts, as everyone scrambles to find something, or someone, to blame. Pollution? Stress? Or are the girls faking? Only Colleen--who's been reading The Crucible for extra credit--comes to realize what nobody else has: Danvers was once Salem Village, where another group of girls suffered from a similarly bizarre epidemic three centuries ago . . .

Inspired by true events--from seventeenth-century colonial life to the halls of a modern-day high school--Conversion casts a spell. With her signature wit and passion, New York Times bestselling author Katherine Howe delivers an exciting and suspenseful novel, a chilling mystery that raises the question, what's really happening to the girls at St. Joan's?