Katzenjammer

“An eerie, savage novel.” —Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

American Horror Story meets the dark comedy of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis as Cat searches for a way to escape her high school. A tale of family, love, tragedy, and masks—the ones others make for us, and the ones we make for ourselves. Katzenjammer will haunt fans of Chelsea Pitcher’s This Lie Will Kill You and E. Lockhart’s We Were Liars.

Cat lives in her high school. She never leaves, and for a long time her school has provided her with everything she needs. But now things are changing. The hallways contract and expand along with the school’s breathing, and the showers in the bathroom run a bloody red. Cat’s best friend is slowly turning into cardboard, and instead of a face, Cat has a cat mask made of her own hardened flesh.

Cat doesn’t remember why she is trapped in her school or why half of them—Cat included—are slowly transforming. Escaping has always been the one impossibility in her school’s upside-down world. But to save herself from the eventual self-destruction all the students face, Cat must find the way out. And to do that, she’ll have to remember what put her there in the first place.

Using chapters alternating between the past and the present, acclaimed author Francesca Zappia weaves a spine-tingling, suspenseful, and haunting story about tragedy and the power of memories. Fans of Marieke Nijkamp’s This Is Where It Ends and Karen McManus’s One of Us Is Lying will lose themselves in the pages of this novel—or maybe in the treacherous hallways of the school.

Includes interior illustrations from the author.

But what horrors will remembering unleash?

• Surreal Horror: A high school that breathes, showers that run with blood, and hallways that twist into an inescapable nightmare.
• Body Horror: As her best friend turns to cardboard and her own face hardens into a mask, Cat must face the horrifying physical toll of her trauma.
• Unreliable Narrator: Cat can’t remember how she got here or what happened before. The truth is buried in memories she’s too terrified to unlock.
• A Haunting Murder Mystery: When a classmate is found shattered in the courtyard, Cat realizes a killer lurks in the halls—but the real mystery is the one that trapped them all.