From the acclaimed author of The Real Boy and The Lost Girl comes a wondrous and provocative fantasy about a kingdom beset by monsters, a mysterious school, and a girl caught in between them.

If no one notices Marya Lupu, is likely because of her brother, Luka. And that's because of what everyone knows: that Luka is destined to become a sorcerer.

The Lupus might be from a small village far from the capital city of Illyria, but that doesn't matter. Every young boy born in in the kingdom holds the potential for the rare ability to wield magic, to protect the country from the terrifying force known only as the Dread. 

For all the hopes the family has for Luka, no one has any for Marya, who can never seem to do anything right. But even so, no one is prepared for the day that the sorcerers finally arrive to test Luka for magical ability, and Marya makes a terrible mistake. Nor the day after, when the Lupus receive a letter from a place called Dragomir Academy-a mysterious school for wayward young girls. Girls like Marya.

Soon she is a hundred miles from home, in a strange and unfamiliar place, surrounded by girls she's never met. Dragomir Academy promises Marya and her classmates a chance to make something of themselves in service to one of the country's powerful sorcerers. But as they learn how to fit into a world with no place for them, they begin to discover things about the magic the men of their country wield, as well as the Dread itself-things that threaten the precarious balance upon which Illyria is built.

• A Magical Academy Unlike Any Other: Dragomir isn’t for chosen ones—it’s for “troubled” girls like Marya. But the real trouble might be the secrets hidden within its walls.
• Uncovering Secrets: When Marya and her new friends dig deeper, they find the truth about the kingdom’s sorcerers and the monstrous Dread is far more dangerous than the official story.
• Sisterhood and Found Family: In a world that has written them off, Marya finds an unlikely kinship with the other outcasts of Dragomir, discovering that their shared strength is a magic all its own.
• A Coming of Age Fantasy: Follow Marya Lupu as she goes from being the family disappointment after a terrible mistake to a girl who holds the power to challenge the very foundations of her kingdom.

"The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy manages the particular magic of being both a true fantasy novel and a clear-eyed reflection of the here-and-now. Bighearted, generous, and outstandingly original, this is a story only Anne Ursu could write."