Katzenjammer

Francesca Zappia lives in central Indiana. When she is not writing, she's drawing her characters, reading, or playing video games. She is also the author of Made You Up and Eliza Mirk's favorite, The Children of Hypnos, a biweekly serial novel posted on Tumblr and Wattpad. She also blogs about writing at francescazappia.com

"A surreal nightmare of a novel. . Readers are deposited unceremoniously into a high school, where students are trapped and many are grotesquely transformed. . . . The Changed and the Unchanged operate as separate factions with defined turf, but someone has begun gruesomely murdering students . . . As Cat slinks around the hallways trying to find the murderer, readers experience her frequent flashbacks . . . [that] also function to help Cat recover memories that shed some light on their current hellish existence. Zappia has created a visceral examination of trauma and violence." - Booklist (starred review)

"Cat is trapped in School: How she got there, how long she has been there, and what is happening, and why are lost to her . . . School is a nightmare world where the violence of words is made manifest in torn flesh and where students othered in the real world find no respite. . . . While interspersed chapters of flashback memories provide some respite, there is ultimately no relief from the psychological and physical violence that permeates both the real world and nightmare conceptions of School." - Kirkus Reviews

"Zappia paints a sinister picture of modern teenage life in this disturbing high school horror novel. Seventeen-year-old Cat cannot recall when or how she and her fellow students got trapped inside School . . . As Cat investigates, memories of her past return-some sweet, but most marred by sadistic bullies. . . . As the mystery's pieces click into place, the devastating reality of the teens' situation becomes clear." - Publishers Weekly