Miss Archer

“A Gothic novel with a flourish of the speculative, a tale so gripping it’s hard to believe this is a debut. The story contains many mysteries—the less said about those the better, untangling them is genuinely satisfying—though it’s principally concerned with the great, perhaps unanswerable question of what it is that makes us human." — Rumaan Alam, New York Times bestselling author of Leave the World Behind An audaciously original and genre-bending debut novel from the mind of celebrated playwright and Pulitzer Prize finalist, Jordan Harrison, about a young woman and the strange, brilliant boy she’s entrusted to raise. Growing up in the Squares, Dre Archer was always told human history was over. Until the day a mysterious woman arrives, plucks her from all she knows, and recruits her as governess to an enigmatic five-year-old boy. Albie is rash, emotionally obtuse, and possibly a genius. He also believes the year is 1884—two centuries before Dre was born. Everyone working at his family’s grand Victorian manor strives to maintain the illusion, keeping the modern world safely outside their doors.