Riverrun snaps up a tragicomedy by the author of I’m Sorry You Feel That Way

Riverrun has snapped up Havoc, a tragicomedy by Rebecca Wait, the author of I’m Sorry You Feel That Way (riverrun).

Publisher Jon Riley acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Caroline Hardman of Hardman & Swainson, for publication in July 2025.

“Havoc is set in a run-down girls’ boarding school in the 1980s, with the cold war still in full swing and featuring a curious case of mass psychogenic illness,” the synopsis says. “Fleeing Scotland in the wake of family disgrace, 16-year-old Ida Campbell secures a scholarship at a failing girls’ boarding school on a remote part of the south English coast. Geography teacher Eleanor Alston, in her forties, a disastrous love affair in her wake, faces the new term with weary resignation. But the fragile ecosystem of the school is disrupted by the arrival of a new teacher [...] More worryingly still, a mysterious sickness starts to spread throughout the school, causing limb jerks and seizures among her pupils. What is happening to the girls of St Anne’s?”

Riley said: “Rebecca Wait is one of a kind. Her characters inhabit a hyper-humorous world in which the author’s wit and invention are compounded by her storytelling verve, making her novels intoxicatingly brilliant. It’s a joy to publish her.”

Wait added: “I’m delighted to be working again with Jon, Jasmine, Elizabeth, Ana and the whole team at riverrun. I had a blast writing Havoc. I’ve been a teacher for 12 years, but have never worked in a school quite like this one. Thankfully.”