The Madwoman Upstairs

In this debut novel, Samantha Whipple is the last surviving descendant of the Brontë family. Her father, who died when she was 15, was obsessed with his ancestors, and now Samantha is at Oxford, hoping that studying the Brontës will lead her to a rumored family legacy. She lives in a 14th-century tower room (included on public tours of the campus) that was once used to quarantine plague victims, and it contains a painting called The Governess. Samantha argues about authorial intent with her tutor, James Timothy Orville III, who seems disinclined to discuss the Brontës with her and instead assigns her to read Browning, Pope, and The Old College Book of Disciplinary Procedures. Meanwhile, volumes of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Agnes Grey start showing up on Samantha's doorstep—and not just any copies but Samantha's father's personal possessions, books that she thought were destroyed in the fire that killed her father. Lowell's dry wit and her ability to combine academic discussion with mystery, romance, and elements of Gothic literature make this a sure-fire hit for teens who like smart and funny books.