Waiting on Wednesday [9]

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Breaking The Spine

 that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

Since I'm currently working my way through Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series and I'm absolutely loving it, you can imagine my excitement when discovering her newest series will be set in the same universe. While there won't be any Alexia Tarabotti, I'm still looking forward to anything written by Carriger. She's brilliant, witty, and a whole lot of fun. Everyone should give this author a try.

First in a four book YA series set 25 years before the Parasol Protectorate but in the same universe.

It's one thing to learn to curtsy properly. It's quite another to learn to curtsy and throw a knife at the same time. Welcome to finishing school. 

Fourteen-year-old Sophronia is the bane of her mother's existence. Sophronia is more interested in dismantling clocks and climbing trees than proper etiquette at tea--and god forbid anyone see her atrocious curtsy. Mrs. Temminnick is desperate for her daughter to become a proper lady. She enrolls Sophronia in Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality. 

But little do Sophronia or her mother know that this is a school where ingenious young girls learn to finish, all right--but it's a different kind of finishing. Mademoiselle Geraldine's certainly trains young ladies in the finer arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but also in the other kinds of finishing: the fine arts of death, diversion, deceit, espionage, and the modern weaponries. Sophronia and her friends are going to have a rousing first year at school.