Available Formats
These Mortal Bodies
By (Author) Elspeth Wilson
Simon & Schuster Ltd
Simon & Schuster Ltd
16th September 2025
Export/Airside
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
Narrative theme: Identity / belonging
Witchcraft and wicca
Sea stories
Contemporary horror and ghost stories
Paperback
384
Width 153mm, Height 234mm
Im ready to be part of something bigger, I told myself, whispering the words over and over, visualizing myself at the centre of things, never alone again.
Leaving behind her childhood in coastal Scotland, neurodivergent Ivy Graveson arrives at a prestigious university and throws herself into the deep end of life on campus.
Though her fellow students all seem to come from money and to have known each other their whole lives, outsider Ivy is determined to belong. She embraces the world of secret societies, and as she discovers the legacy of her college, the parallels between its past and her present become striking. Because however hard she tries to ignore it, Ivy has always felt one with water and her own personal talisman, a heron, is never far away.
In just one life-changing year in these hallowed halls, Ivy will have to decide how much sisterhood means to her and how far shell go to become the person she was destined to be.
A richly atmospheric campus novel perfect for fans of The Secret History and dark academia, These Mortal Bodies is an intoxicating story of obsession, infatuation and toxic friendship in the world of the elites, where rules are made to be broken.
Elspeth Wilson is a Scottish writer and poet. These Mortal Bodies is her debut novel. Her poetry pamphlet Too Hot to Sleep was published in 2023. When she's not writing, she can usually be found in or near the sea.