It sounds like a joke, or a riddle. But it was only, would ever after be, the rest of our life.

Shortly after Halloween, 1991, the local high-school basketball star is found in the woods near Battle Creek, Pennsylvania, with a bullet in his head and a gun in his hand—a discovery that sends tremors through this conservative community, already unnerved by growing rumors of satanic worship in the region.

In the wake of this incident, bright but lonely Hannah Dexter is befriended by Lacey Champlain, a dark-eyed, Cobain-worshipping bad influence. Lacey forges a fast, intimate bond with the impressionable Dex, making her over in her own image—and unleashing a fierce defiance with unexpected and harrowing consequences. By turns a shocking story of love and violence and an addictive portrait of the intoxication of female friendship, Girls on Fire is an incendiary and unforgettable snapshot of girlhood: girls lost and found, girls weak and strong, girls who burn bright and brighter—and girls who flicker away.

Advance Praise for Girls on Fire

“Like lightning in a bottle, Robin Wasserman’s Girls on Fire captures girlhood friendship in all its shattering intensity. A captivating, terrifying novel, and one you won’t forget.”—Megan Abbott, author of The Fever and Dare Me

“Girls on Fire is a dark, propulsive fever dream of youth and friendship—a piercing vision of what it means to mistake yourself for who you are in someone else’s eyes. I wanted to grab these girls and shake them, sing them lullabies, stop them—but all I could do was keep reading them, relentlessly enthralled by the heat-seeking missile of  Robin Wasserman’s fearless imagination.”—Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams and The Gin Closet

“To read Girls on Fire is to live in the place, flesh, and time of this unforgettable tale. Wasserman’s prose is a spell cast over the reader, shockingly full of the terror of truth. This is not a novel you’ll put down after you pick it up, so clear some time. And it’s not a novel you’ll ever forget after you’ve read it—don’t say you weren’t warned. Wasserman is a brilliant writer, and Girls on Fire is a gorgeous gift of a novel.” —Laura Kasischke, author of In a Perfect World and The Raising