Duncan - Daughters of Eve

Copyright 1979 by Lois Duncan

Author Q&A copyright 2011 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Little, Brown and Company

Hachette Book Group

237 Park Avenue

New York, NY 10017

Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

www.twitter.com/littlebrown.

Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

First eBook Edition: October 2011

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

ISBN: 978-0-316-19453-2

Daughters of Eve is a rare find: a young adult novel that isnt afraid to engage with feminism in all of its complexity. I highly recommend it to all girls who are thinking about their place in the world.

Malinda Lo, author of Ash and Huntress

There are a lot of smart authors, and a lot of authors who write reasonably well. Lois Duncan is smart, writes darn good books and is one of the most entertaining authors in America.

Walter Dean Myers, Printz awardwinning author of
Monster and Dope Sick

She knows what you did last summer. And she knows how to find that secret evil in her characters hearts, evil she turns into throat-clutching suspense in book after book. Does anyone write scarier books than Lois Duncan? I dont think so.

R. L. Stine, author of Goosebumps and Fear Street

I couldnt be more pleased that Lois Duncans books will now reach a new generation of readers.

Judy Blume, author of Forever and Tiger Eyes

Lois Duncan has always been one of my biggest inspirations. I gobbled up her novels in my teens, often reading them again and again and scaring myself over and over. Shes a master of suspense, so prepare to be dazzled and spooked!

Sara Shepard, author of the Pretty Little Liars series

Lois Duncans books kept me up many a late night reading under the covers with a flashlight!

Wendy Mass, author of A Mango-Shaped Space, Leap Day and Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall

Lois Duncan is the patron saint of all things awesome.

Jenny Han, author of The Summer I Turned Pretty series

Duncan is one of the smartest, funniest and most terrifying writers arounda writer that a generation of girls LOVED to tatters, while learning to never read her books without another friend to scream with handy.

Lizzie Skurnick, author of Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading

In middle school and high school, I loved Lois Duncans novels. I still do. I particularly remember Killing Mr. Griffin, which took my breath away. I couldnt quite believe a writer could DO that. I feel extremely grateful to Lois Duncan for taking unprecedented risks, challenging preconceptions and changing the young adult field forever.

Erica S. Perl, author of Vintage Veronica

Haunting and suspensefulDuncans writing captures everything fun about reading!

Suzanne Young, author of The Naughty
List series and A Need So Beautiful

Killing Mr. Griffin taught me a lot about writing. Thrilling stuff. It was one of the most requested and enjoyed books I taught with my students. I think its influenced most of my writing since.

Gail Giles, author of Right Behind You and Shattering Glass

If ever a writers work should be brought before each new generation of young readers, it is that of Lois Duncan. The grace with which she has led her lifea life that included a tragedy that would have brought most of us to our kneesis reflected in her writing, particularly (from my point of view) in I Know What You Did Last Summer. Her stories, like Lois herself, are ageless.

Chris Crutcher, author of Angry Management, Deadline and
Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

Lois Duncans thrillers have a timeless quality about them. They are good stories, very well told, that also happen to illuminate both the heroic and dark parts of growing up.

Marc Talbert, author of Dead Birds Singing, A Sunburned
Prayer and Heart of a Jaguar

DONT LOOK BEHIND YOU

DOWN A DARK HALL

I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER

KILLING MR. GRIFFIN

LOCKED IN TIME

STRANGER WITH MY FACE

SUMMER OF FEAR

For my niece, Sheri Arquette

The calendar placed the first day of fall on the twenty-third of September, and on the afternoon of Friday, the twenty-second, Kristy Grange walked slowly down Locust Street, her backpack heavy on her shoulders. Her head was bent forward beneath the additional weight of the last load of official summer sunshine.

It had been a long summer for Kristya terrible summer, she told herself resentfullythe kind of summer when anyone with any common sense left Modesta for somewhere else. The heat had begun in the early mornings. Shed woken up to it, feeling her body damp and sticky beneath the thin material of the oversize T-shirt she slept in, and by the time she was dressed in cutoffs and a tank, the droplets were already beginning to collect along her hairline and in the hollows under her arms and behind her knees. By noon, the walls of the Grange home had enclosed the sort of heat one might expect to find in an oven.

I dont know why you wont let me turn on the air-conditioning, shed complained to her mom. Why do we have it if we dont use it? Its crazy.

Your dads the one who pays the utility bills, not you, Kristy, Mrs. Grange had said shortly. You wait until four in the afternoon, and then you can turn it on and get the place cooled down for dinner.

Her mom worked all day in the womens section of an air-conditioned department store. A lot she knew about southern Michigan in the summertime. The truck her dad drove was also air-conditioned, and her brothers, Pete and Niles, spent the whole summer up at the lake sitting on lifeguard towers. As for nine-year-old Eric, he couldnt care less about the heat, or anything else, for that matter. Eric would go out and pedal his bicycle for miles under the blazing noonday sun, like a complete idiot, and come home with heat rash prickling scarlet all over him, and all their mom would say was, You poor kid. Lets get you into a cool tub, and then to Kristy, How could you let him do that? Youre supposed to be taking care of him.

Yes, itd been a gruesome summer, and the fall would be gruesome, too. It would cool down, of course; already the intensity of the afternoon sun was lessening. Even since school had started, Kristy could feel a marked difference. Two weeks ago shed completed the mile walk from Modesta High School feeling as limp and exhausted as though shed been running in a marathon. Now the sunlight on her head and the back of her neck felt lighter, and she no longer found it necessary to walk at the edge of the sidewalk in the shade of the maple trees.