Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran
The untimely death of a student at a girls' boarding school turns out to be the first in a haunting series of escalating supernatural events. A thrilling debut novel about teenage repression, queer desire, and the everyday horror of coming of age.
Spoiled Milk is a dirty little jewel of a novel, as thrilling as it is unsettling, as moving as it is frequently horrifyingCurran writes with incredible precision on fear, desire and the insidiousness of authority and empire. A truly impeccable novel -- Julia Armfield
Pure class with a delicious touch of high kitsch, Spoiled Milk is gory, tender, sexy, wry, and just so exquisitely written. It says as much about first love as it does masticated limbs, about Empire as it does ectoplasm - read it and be enthralled. -- Krystelle Bamford
Loved this - lesbian Mallory Towers meets The Conjuring -- Alice Slater
The haunted lesbian boarding school horror show we always wanted. From its dread-inducing opening to that breathtaking finale, Spoiled Milk is brimming with images that we'll carry into way too many nightmares. Avery Curran is a witch. -- Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta
Something wicked oozes through Briarley School for girls. Has the slave trade, spiritualism or sapphic desire unleashed it? Whichever way it's slick and rotten fun. Get ready for your new literary pash. -- Clare Polland
Spoiled Milk is a post-war fable about the death of Empire and a lesbian phantasmagoria, but it's also one of the most well-executed pieces of horror writing I've ever read. It is a terrifically nasty, loving, heretical, filthy look at the boarding school story; Avery Curran puts the entire genre in its grave and then invites the reader to view its exhumed corpse. This book destroyed me. -- Tamsyn Muir
Bristling with tension, Spoiled Milk is Enid Blyton on acid; a gothic, sinister and darkly funny read. I raced through the blood-chilling finale -- Flora Carr
Brilliantly bitchy, but also haunting and tender, Spoiled Milk perfectly captures the youthful longing for something that feels just out of reach. It's gothic, gruesome and sassy: the unholy lovechild of Beetlejuice and Picnic at Hanging Rock. I will miss these girls! -- Tobi Coventry
Seances, ectoplasm, soft and furious kisses, a love triangle with a ghost, all of it hurtling towards a hauntingly beautiful finale. Spoiled Milk is the book of my dreams and my nightmares. -- Maggie Thrash
Step into the halls of Briarley, where nothing is to be trusted and the only thing more frightening than death is having to live long enough to grow up. Both darkly funny and genuinely harrowing, Spoiled Milk is the boarding school novel my spooky heart has been waiting for. Avery Curran has written an absolute knockout. -- Allison Epstein, author of Fagin the Thief
What a vicious, elegant, deliriously unpleasant book - as if Stephen King's IT was a lesbian boarding-school story set in the beginning of the dying days of empire. I was thrilled -- Arkady Martine, Hugo Award-winning author of A Memory Called Empire
Is there a more atmospheric gothic setting than the cloistered halls of an English girls' boarding school on a rotting country estate? Spoiled Milk's Briarley harbours a sapphic hothouse of heady spiritualism and bitter, shifting loyalties as its girls grapple with the shocking death of their charismatic classmate Violet. Curran's chilling prose offers a slow-burn horror story in the vein of Daphne Du Maurier, deepening the dread as the girls careen toward a bloodcurdling cry of a climax. -- Margaret DeRosia, author of Eight Strings
Pure class with a delicious touch of high kitsch, Spoiled Milk is gory, tender, sexy, wry, and just so exquisitely written. It says as much about first love as it does masticated limbs, about Empire as it does ectoplasm - read it and be enthralled. -- Krystelle Bamford
Loved this - lesbian Mallory Towers meets The Conjuring -- Alice Slater
The haunted lesbian boarding school horror show we always wanted. From its dread-inducing opening to that breathtaking finale, Spoiled Milk is brimming with images that we'll carry into way too many nightmares. Avery Curran is a witch. -- Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta
Something wicked oozes through Briarley School for girls. Has the slave trade, spiritualism or sapphic desire unleashed it? Whichever way it's slick and rotten fun. Get ready for your new literary pash. -- Clare Polland
Spoiled Milk is a post-war fable about the death of Empire and a lesbian phantasmagoria, but it's also one of the most well-executed pieces of horror writing I've ever read. It is a terrifically nasty, loving, heretical, filthy look at the boarding school story; Avery Curran puts the entire genre in its grave and then invites the reader to view its exhumed corpse. This book destroyed me. -- Tamsyn Muir
Bristling with tension, Spoiled Milk is Enid Blyton on acid; a gothic, sinister and darkly funny read. I raced through the blood-chilling finale -- Flora Carr
Brilliantly bitchy, but also haunting and tender, Spoiled Milk perfectly captures the youthful longing for something that feels just out of reach. It's gothic, gruesome and sassy: the unholy lovechild of Beetlejuice and Picnic at Hanging Rock. I will miss these girls! -- Tobi Coventry
Seances, ectoplasm, soft and furious kisses, a love triangle with a ghost, all of it hurtling towards a hauntingly beautiful finale. Spoiled Milk is the book of my dreams and my nightmares. -- Maggie Thrash
Step into the halls of Briarley, where nothing is to be trusted and the only thing more frightening than death is having to live long enough to grow up. Both darkly funny and genuinely harrowing, Spoiled Milk is the boarding school novel my spooky heart has been waiting for. Avery Curran has written an absolute knockout. -- Allison Epstein, author of Fagin the Thief
What a vicious, elegant, deliriously unpleasant book - as if Stephen King's IT was a lesbian boarding-school story set in the beginning of the dying days of empire. I was thrilled -- Arkady Martine, Hugo Award-winning author of A Memory Called Empire
Is there a more atmospheric gothic setting than the cloistered halls of an English girls' boarding school on a rotting country estate? Spoiled Milk's Briarley harbours a sapphic hothouse of heady spiritualism and bitter, shifting loyalties as its girls grapple with the shocking death of their charismatic classmate Violet. Curran's chilling prose offers a slow-burn horror story in the vein of Daphne Du Maurier, deepening the dread as the girls careen toward a bloodcurdling cry of a climax. -- Margaret DeRosia, author of Eight Strings
AVERY CURRAN studied History at university, where she first became interested in spiritualism. She finished an MA in Victorian Studies in 2021, and is now finishing a PhD on spiritualism and queerness in the nineteenth century. She was born in New York City and currently lives in London with her girlfriend and their cat.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781529443578 |
| ISBN 10 | 1529443571 |
| Title | Spoiled Milk |
| Author | Avery Curran |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Quercus Publishing |
| Year published | 2026-03-12 |
| Number of pages | 352 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |