What is the title of your latest release?
CRY HAVOC
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
When disgraced 16-year-old Ida Campbell arrives at a crumbling girls’ school on England’s remote coast, she hopes for a fresh start. Instead, she finds a dangerous roommate, a teacher with a secret, and a mysterious sickness spreading through the pupils. As Cold War paranoia closes in, Ida must uncover what’s really happening at St Anne’s—before she becomes its next victim.
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
It needed to be somewhere remote, and I wanted to set it in the early 1980s so I could exploit the cold war backdrop; and the 80s also worked well for the school setting, as it was before much meaningful safeguarding or oversight was introduced, especially in private schools. Total chaos.
Would you hang out with your heroine in real life?
Definitely! Ida is quite self-contained, so I think Louise would be the most fun. But I would also be terrified of her.
What are three words that describe your hero?
There isn’t one!
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
I learned a huge amount about neurology.
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I edit as I draft. I feel like I can’t move forwards if the foundations aren’t secure. It makes me anxious. But I also do a lot of editing once a draft is complete. The best work usually emerges in the editing.
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Chocolate truffles. That was me trying to give a more ‘foodie’ version of my real answer. In truth I will happily eat any kind of chocolate, however cheap and mass produced. I don’t care. Hand it over.
Describe your writing space/office!
Embarrassing, but it’s just my kitchen table, surrounded by books, coffee cups and the remnants of breakfast. I don’t have an office. I don’t even have a proper desk. I should get one. I’m an adult.
Who is an author you admire?
Hilary Mantel.
Is there a book that changed your life?
I don’t think I can say any one book. There have been various books that have meant a great deal to me at different times in my life. And my life overall would have been very different if I hadn’t been a reader.
Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published). Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I think I was at school (as a teacher, not a child), in a break between lessons. I was twenty-three or twenty-four. Pretty sure it was an email from my agent, not a call. Seems like a shame not to be able to remember specifics. I do remember other moments more clearly, like when I had my first meeting with my agent – 15 years on, she’s still my agent – and she said she wanted to represent me. After I left her office, I couldn’t find the release button to get out of the side gate. I think I had to climb over it in the end. Of course that’s the memory my brain has kept.
What’s your favorite genre to read?
Well, I guess literary fiction, but I know that’s such a vague category. Character-driven literary fiction. I also need there to be some kind of plot. I’m too tired to read a book without a plot.
What’s your favorite movie?
Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility. It’s one of the very few films I regularly re-watch. I think it’s note-perfect.
What is your favorite season?
Autumn
How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
By eating lots of things. I also really enjoy being given presents.
What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
The podcast Hysterical from Dan Taberski at Wondery is a brilliant unpacking of the outbreak of illness in LeRoy, New York, in 2011. This case, and the way it was handled, influenced how I presented the outbreak in my novel.
What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Thai
What do you do when you have free time?
Sometimes I read. Sometimes I scroll mindlessly on my phone.
What can readers expect from you next?
Well, it opens in Gloucester, UK, in 1994, which might mean more to UK readers. That was the period, and place, of the investigation into Fred and Rose West. The story isn’t about them, though – it’s about the aftermath.
CRY HAVOC by Rebecca Wait
A humorous dark academia novel, set in a failing English girls’ school in the 1980s, in which a teen running from her past becomes immersed in a dangerous and intriguing mystery involving a shady new teacher and a strange contagion afflicting her classmates.
Fleeing Scotland after a humiliating family scandal, sixteen-year-old Ida Campbell secures a scholarship at a failing girls’ boarding school situated on the remote south English coast. Her new Headmistress—an eccentric woman obsessed with the Cold War and nuclear annihilation—seems surprised that the young woman accepted her offer, but Ida feels that St. Anne’s could be a refuge—until she discovers that her roommate, the infamous Louise Adler, is a potential arsonist and hardened outcast.
Ida barely has time to make a good impression (or figure out what Louise’s deal is) when Matthew Langfield, a new teacher, arrives. While the girls are all desperately intrigued to find out everything about him – after all, who takes a job at St. Anne’s? – the school’s geography teacher, Eleanor Alston, has an uneasy feeling that he is not who he says he is. And things only get worse when a mysterious sickness starts to spread throughout the school, causing strange limb jerks and seizures among the pupils.
What is happening to the girls of St Anne’s? Are some of the girls faking these fits? Could someone be poisoning them? Is Matthew Langfield a smooth-tongued liar? Will Louise set the school on fire, or push a girl out of a window. . . again? And is Ida’s past going to catch up with her, despite doing everything to keep it secret?
Expertly melding the cloying atmosphere and eerie mystery of The Secret History, Ninth House, and The Fever with the sharp wit and delightful absurdity of Derry Girls, Cry Havoc is a dazzling literary introduction to a whip smart, clever, and elegant writer.
Young Adult Coming of Age [ Harper Perennial, On Sale: January 20, 2026, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9780063473133 / eISBN: 9780063473126 ]
Buy CRY HAVOC: Amazon.com | Kindle | BN.com | Apple Books | Kobo | Google Play | Books-A-Million | Indie BookShops | Ripped Bodice | Walmart.com | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Amazon DE | Amazon FR
About Rebecca Wait
Rebecca Wait is the author of five novels, most recently Havoc.
I’m Sorry You Feel That Way was a book of the year for The Times, Guardian, Express, Good Housekeeping and BBC Culture, and was shortlisted for the Nota Bene Prize.
Our Fathers, received widespread acclaim and was a Guardian book of the year and a thriller of the month for Waterstones.
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