Idlwyld Girls

Author's name: Simon St. James

In the quiet Vermont countryside, Idlewild Hall stands tall and somber, a boarding school that was once a haven for outcast girls: the rebellious, the unwanted, those whose intelligence exceeded societal norms. The year is 1950, and the fates of four girls become intertwined in a deep friendship, amidst whispers of a ghost called Mary Hand that roams the halls, uttering terrifying words. But the true horror wasn't a ghost; it was the disappearance of one of them into the dead of night, an event that remains a festering wound in the memory of the place.
More than six decades later, in 2014, journalist Fiona Sheridan returned to this haunted place. Twenty years earlier, her sister's body had been found in the fields surrounding the ruins of the abandoned school. Although a murderer was convicted and the case closed, Fiona had a deep feeling that the truth had not yet been told, and that the walls of Idlewild Hall held an answer.
When mysterious, anonymously funded renovations begin on the old building, Fiona is driven to write the story. But what she discovers surpasses her imagination: buried evidence linking the school's haunted past to its tragic present, and a voice from the past that refuses to be silenced.