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Riverrun has acquired Spoiled Milk, a queer, gothic horror novel by Avery Curran in a four-way auction.
Jasmine Palmer bought UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from Imogen Morrell at Greene & Heaton. riverrun will publish simultaneously to Doubleday US and Canada in spring 2026.
Spoiled Milk is described as a “stylish, smart and brilliantly entertaining campus novel” about the intricacies of friendship, female desire and haunted institutions, which all mingle with the atmosphere of 1920s England and the rise of post-war spiritualism.
Its synopsis reads: “In 1928, Emily Locke’s final year at the isolated and traditional Briarley School for Girls is made bearable by her peers, but when her best friend Violet falls to her death on her 18th birthday, Emily and her buttoned-up rival Evelyn are, for once, in agreement: the terrible incident must have something to do with Violet’s suspicious relationship with the lovely young French schoolmistress.
“As their investigation stalls amid unsettling events at Briarley, the upper-sixth girls turn to the interwar spiritualist craze for answers from the beyond. Instead, at their amateur séances they receive garbled, dire warnings of oncoming danger.”
Avery Curran studied history at university and then worked at a publisher and archive centred around a Swedish mystic. She is now midway through a PhD on queerness in 19th-century spiritualism.
She said: "I’m thrilled to work with the riverrun team on my debut novel. Jasmine understood exactly what I wanted to do with Spoiled Milk - a novel about girls, ghosts, gore, and the rot at the heart of Englishness. I’m very grateful to her and to my agent, Imogen, who has been a stellar champion from the beginning."
Palmer said: “I’m delighted to be publishing Spoiled Milk. Avery’s intoxicating prose perfectly blends horror and heart, with delicious gothic imagery and ferocious women that live off the page.”
Morrell added: “I’m so pleased that Spoiled Milk has found the perfect publishing home with Jasmine and the riverrun team. Avery is a bold, literary talent and working with her is a true delight. I can’t wait for this brilliantly clever, haunting novel about the spectre of queerness and hothouse teenage repression to reach readers.”