The riders are excited about going to Moose Hill but the experience turns out to be not what they expected.

“This summer’s first romantic page turner.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Named a most anticipated book for Summer 2013 by The Wall Street Journaland Publishers Weekly and USA Today, NPR, and People summer reads pick From the author of The After Party, a lush, sexy, evocative debut novel of family secrets and girls’-school rituals, set in the 1930s South. It is 1930, the midst of the Great Depression. After her mysterious role in a family tragedy, passionate, strong-willed Thea Atwell, age fifteen, has been cast out of her Florida home, exiled to an equestrienne boarding school for Southern debutantes. High in the Blue Ridge Mountains, with its complex social strata ordered by money, beauty, and girls’ friendships, the Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls is a far remove from the free-roaming, dreamlike childhood Thea shared with her twin brother on their family’s citrus farm—a world now partially shattered. As Thea grapples with her responsibility for the events of the past year that led her here, she finds herself enmeshed in a new order, one that will change her sense of what is possible for herself, her family, her country. Weaving provocatively between home and school, the narrative powerfully unfurls the true story behind Thea’s expulsion from her family, but it isn’t long before the mystery of her past is rivaled by the question of how it will shape her future. Part scandalous love story, part heartbreaking family drama, The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls is an immersive, transporting page-turner—a vivid, propulsive novel about sex, love, family, money, class, home, and horses, all set against the ominous threat of the Depression—and the major debut of an important new writer.

It’s the first day at Wendelby horse riding camp when eleven-year-old Kristina sees a pale little face in the attic window of an abandoned — and possibly haunted — house. Kristina’s parents have just separated, and she has moved with her mum and little sister to her mum’s hometown in the south of Sweden. Kristina feels awkward and clumsy most of the time, and her friends at school don’t exactly make her feel better about herself. Turning up at the camp not knowing anyone, she feels alone and a little scared. But it’s not long until she meets Anna, a girl who seems to have no fear, and Finesse, the chestnut horse that opens Kristina’s heart. Kristina and her new-found friends sneak out at night to investigate the mysterious house. A woman used to live there — some say she could talk to animals, others say she was a witch who will return from the dead to make sure no one disturbs the house. Who is the child in the attic? And what happened to the people that used to live there? Kristina finds letters from the 1950s that talk about longing, grief and loneliness, but also about great kindness and love. Back at the camp, an overheard phone conversation late at night suggests that Viktoria, the two-faced riding instructor, is about to do something suspicious. Set in Sweden, in the magical long days and white nights of summer, this is a story about a haunted house, a stolen horse and a man that disappeared more than sixty years ago. It’s also a story about friendship, belonging and the strong bond between a girl and a horse.