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THE REFORMATORY

Tananarive Due

Gracetown, Florida, summer 1950, Robert is sent to the Gracetown school for boys for kicking a white boy's leg, and there he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living, and the dead.
Set in Jim Crow Florida, The Reformatory tells the story of young Robert Stephens Jr., who for a trivial scuffle with a white boy is sent to The Gracetown School for Boys, a segregated reformatory that is a chamber of horrors, and is haunted by the boys that have died there.

Determined to escape before he becomes a haint after falling victim to the school's Warden, Robert enlists the help of the school's haints, but the dead have their own motivations.

A riveting novel of historical fiction and social horror, this is Due's masterpiece and an elogy for the great-uncle her family lost to the Dozier School for boys that this is inspired by.

TANANARIVE DUE is an award-winning author who teaches Black Horror and Afrofuturism at UCLA. She is an executive producer on Shudder's groundbreaking documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror. She and her husband/collaborator Steven Barnes wrote "A Small Town" for Season 2 of "The Twilight Zone" on CBS All Access. A leading voice in black speculative fiction for more than 20 years, Due has won an American Book Award, an NAACP Image Award, and a British Fantasy Award, and her writing has been included in best-of-the-year anthologies. Her books include Ghost Summer: Stories, My Soul to Keep, and The Good House. She and her late mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due, co-authored Freedom in the Family: a Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights. She is married to author Steven Barnes, with whom she collaborates on screenplays. They live with their son, Jason, and two cats.
Available products
Book

Published 2023-06-27 by Saga Press / Gallery

Book

Published 2023-10-31 by Saga Press / Gallery

Comments

One of the best novels published in 2023. A superb mix of literary fiction, horror, and historical fiction, The Reformatory tells a story of inequality, ghosts, abuse, and the power of love between siblings... Not only a brave novel about racism and injustice but also a timely, necessary read that ultimately serves as an invitation to make sure we never make the same mistakes again - and to stomp out racism wherever it raises its ugly head.

A supernatural twist on history... Engaging and fast-paced... The Reformatory is equal parts historical fiction, paranormal horror, social commentary and personal history, and is worthy of the time and tears Due put into her novel.

Tananarive Due's newest novel puts a haunting spin on historical fiction. Based on the life of a relative her family never spoke of and the infamous Dozier School for Boys, The Reformatory is full of real-life history that's as frightening as the ghost story she tells. Read more...

A gripping, page-turning novel... The Reformatory is a haunting work of historical fiction written as only American Book Awardwinning author Tananarive Due could, by piecing together the life of the relative her family never spoke of and bringing his tragedy and those of so many others at the infamous Dozier School for Boys to the light in this riveting novel. Read more...

This week, host Brittany Luse kicks off spooky season by sitting down with the current champion of Black horror, Jordan Peele... Then, Brittany is joined by Black horror scholar and author Tananarive Due, to discuss her contributions to the anthology and her upcoming novel, The Reformatory. Due walks Brittany through how she honors a horrific past while offering readers satisfying scares.... Read more...

A gripping, suspenseful historical fiction novel replete with vengeful spirits. Excellently written and paced, this story masterfully showcases racial injustice.

Tananarive Due at her best. Hallucinatory, haunting, terrifying and moving, a tour de force of a novel.

Ripped-from-the-pages-of-history real... A gripping story of survival, of family, of learning how to be brave in the most dangerous of circumstances. And it will haunt you in the best way long after you turn the last page. Read more...

A gripping, page-turning novel set in Jim Crow Florida that follows Robert Stephen Jones as he's sent to a segregated reform school that is a chamber of terrors where he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living, and the dead. Read more...

he great Tananarive Due is back... If you like your horror with strong social commentary and deep connections to real history, you need this novel... I could not put it down!

Due brilliantly plates an equal parts jailbreak and ghost story, both playing by history's rulebook, pulling no punches along the way, with neither element hindering the other, which is a feat on its own, but to make it edge-of-seat-worthy with an epic showdown-at-high-noon finish is just extra icing on the icing.

Moby Dick might have flipped America on its back to show the rotting underbelly, but The Reformatory's looking just as closely at our bad history, and somehow finding the heart beating underneath it all. This is the novel I've been waiting for. It breaks your heart, but it also holds it together.

A fantastical, elegant and miraculous delivery of justice for historic atrocities by master of horror Tananarive Due... Due's humane and meticulously researched retelling reminds us that nothing is scarier than the demons that walk among us. Beautiful and expertly executed, The Reformatory is a horror masterpiece that derives its power from both the magical and the mundane. Read more...

UK: Titan Books UK

With fully realized characters and well-placed twists, Due ratchets up the tension until the final, extraordinary showdown.

A vividly realized page-turner, which is at once an ingenious ghost story, a white-knuckle adventure, and an illuminating if infuriating look back at a shameful period in American jurisprudence. Read more...

Tananarive Due is one of the greatest living horror writers, and her new book blends her signature style with an exploration into a very personal trauma: Due's great-uncle was one of many Black children harmed by the Florida reform school known as the Dozier School for Boys, and The Reformatory takes readers into the nightmare that was the school circa 1950. Sure to be as powerful as it is haunting. Read more...

Today's ranking on Amazon (November 7, 2023 - just one week after publishing): #3 in Black & African American Horror Fiction #19 in Black & African American Historical Fiction (Books) #128 in 20th Century Historical Fiction (Books)

The Reformatory combines current concerns about race and justice for young Black men with an intensely readable, immersive story with decisive paranormal features. In fact, the novel's extended, layered denouement is so heart-smashingly good, it made me late for work... Due is a prolific writer, with a popular and acclaimed oeuvre that shows the influence of Octavia E. Butler... Robert Stephens changes from a loyal but melancholy, mother-haunted little brother into a self-preserving ghost hunter and, finally, into a daring justice seeker. His transformation tracks the novel's own capacity to be, at once, a supernatural historical novel and a straight-up page-turner. Read more...

Author profile - 7 Black Authors Bend the Rules of the Horror Genre: Horror is a genre that creates fear and resilience. These 7 Black authors changed the meaning to horror. This Black History Month, let's discover who they are. Read more...

With a body of work that just keeps coming - The Reformatory, a new novel about the horrors of segregation will be published by Simon and Schuster in October 2023 her point of view on the current glow-up of horror is thoughtful, engaging, and impressive. Speaking with BGN via video chat, Due had much to share. Read more...

Tananarive Due is one of the greatest living horror writers, and her new book blends her signature style with an exploration into a very personal trauma: Due's great-uncle was one of many Black children harmed by the Florida reform school known as the Dozier School for Boys, and The Reformatory takes readers into the nightmare that was the school circa 1950. Sure to be as powerful as it is haunting. Read more...

The Reformatory is moving and convincing because it knows that no one needs to possess America to force it to do evil. And it also knows that real evil is a lot worse than the classics would have us believe.

An epic novel of horror and real history. Tananarive Due displays all her powers as a master of the form, there's frights and chills and also so much love. I tore through this book. This novel is a straight up masterpiece, it should be read and remembered for a long time.

You're in for a treat.The Reformatoryis one of those books you can't put down. Tananarive Due hit it out of the park.

The Reformatory is proof of Due's literary prowess... A heart-wrenching tale about the power of love, resilience, and community over the violence of white supremacy.

Stunning... Robert and Gloria form this tale's beating heart, fictional characters as captivating and alive as any I've encountered in a long time. Their mutual strength and love for each other illuminate the darkness of the story Due tells... I barely stirred while reading the novel's final hundred, deeply satisfying pages, transported into Due's beautiful and terrible world. Read more...

The Reformatory is a masterpiece -- a new American classic of the uncanny. I was gripped from the first lines to the catch-your-breath desperation of the final pages. Even in the tale's grimmest moments, Tananarive Due insists on the almost supernatural power of simple kindness. You have to read this book.

Her fiction is always powerful, and The Reformatory promises to be her most moving - and horrifying - tale yet. Read more...

Combining the terrifying realism of Colson Whitehead's THE NICKEL BOYS with the chilling horror of works like Andrew Pyper's THE RESIDENCE, Tananarive Due's THE REFORMATORY is a heart-stopping, searing reimagining of Florida's notoriously cruel Dozier School... Due cuts the historical fiction elements of her book with jarring, jump-scare phantasmagorical elements to create one of the most chilling works of historical horror I have ever read... The horror elements absolutely sing, making clear the power of horror and its ability not just to scare, but to provide a strange, sublime catharsis. Expansive, lucid prose that is intensely moving and convincing, not just in spite of its more fantastical elements, but because of them.

The writing here is spectacular; the pacing, engrossing; the setting, heartbreaking but honest; and the characters are given a nuance and depth rarely seen. A masterpiece of fiction. Read more...

Interview by Carole V. Bell - Tananarive Due's 'The Reformatory' honors her family ghosts ... Read more...

Ryan Murphy, take note. Tananarive Due has written the 'American horror story.' Set in Jim Crow Florida of the 1950s, "The Reformatory" is a mesmerizing novel full of haunting twists and heartbreaking horrors.

Due's hefty novel tackles tough themes of racism and America's troubled past and present while still bringing the scares. Read more...

Author's profile - Tananarive Due's Haunted History Read more...

Tananarive Due's latest novel, "The Reformatory," cements her place in the canon of Black horror - a genre she connects to her family legacy of civil-rights activism... Due is a trailblazer in Black horror.

After Robert Stephen Jones Jr. kicks a white boy's leg, he's sent to Gracetown School for Boys. The reform school, though, isn't what he expects. It's, well, haunted. Really, really haunted. And the ghosts mean the boys who attend Gracetown School for Boys don't end up getting out alive. Read more...