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Also by Marisha Pessl:

Darkly, December 2024
Hardcover / e-Book
Night Film, August 2013
Hardcover / e-Book
Special Topics in Calamity Physics, May 2007
Paperback
Special Topics in Calamity Physics, September 2006
Hardcover

SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS
By: Marisha Pessl

Penguin
September 2006
On Sale: September 7, 2006
Featuring: Blue van Meer
528 pages
ISBN: 067003777X
EAN: 9780670037773
Hardcover
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Fiction | Mystery Woman Sleuth

Special Topics in Calamity Physics is a darkly hilarious coming-of-age novel and a richly plotted suspense tale told through the distinctive voice of its heroine, Blue van Meer. After a childhood moving from one academic outpost to another with her father (a man prone to aphorisms and meteoric affairs), Blue is clever, deadpan, and possessed of a vast lexicon of literary, political, philosophical, and scientific knowledge—and is quite the cineaste to boot. In her final year of high school at the elite (and unusual) St. Gallway School in Stockton, North Carolina, Blue falls in with a charismatic group of friends and their captivating teacher, Hannah Schneider. But when the drowning of one of Hannah’s friends and the shocking death of Hannah herself lead to a confluence of mysteries, Blue is left to make sense of it all with only her gimlet-eyed instincts and cultural references to guide—or misguide—her.

Media Buzz

Morning Edition - December 12, 2006
Day To Day - September 4, 2006
Studio 360 - September 2, 2006