Cranewell’s Disciple, by Nancy Bombaci

A Novel of Pseudo-science, Psychedelia, and the Pursuit of Soveneura

A darkly comic gothic satire of intellect, inheritance, and academic obsession.

At Holy Grail College, disciplinary dean and archivist Jillana Belmont has built her life on refinement, pedigree, and control. But beneath the polished rituals of a small New England college town, old prejudices and older secrets are beginning to surface.

Devoted to the theories of the notorious Dr. Thaddeus Meyer Cranewell, Jillana becomes fixated on Professor Benedicta DeSalvo, whose brilliance threatens everything Jillana believes about class, intelligence, and worth. As archival theft, academic rivalry, and hallucinatory conviction blur into one another, Jillana’s pursuit of proof becomes something far stranger—and far more dangerous.

When Benedicta and her research assistant, Gina Furbona, recognize the story Jillana is trying to impose on them, they answer with a weapon of their own: satire. Sharp, theatrical, and unsettling, Cranewell’s Disciple exposes the grotesque fantasies beneath genteel respectability.