Doll Parts
  • Published: 26 August 2025
  • ISBN: 9781464245145
  • Imprint: Sourcebooks Landmark
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $26.00
Categories:

Doll Parts

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The Virgin Suicides meets I Have Some Questions For You with a dash of the horrors of Nightbitch in this debut suspense following one woman as she begins to uncover the truth of the death of her estranged best friend and the Sylvia Plath adoring girls they attended college with decades ago.

The Virgin Suicides meets I Have Some Questions For You in a dual timeline suspense following one woman as she begins to uncover the truth of the death of her estranged best friend and the Sylvia Plath adoring sad girls they attended college with decades ago, all while holding a secret that will slowly unravel her new, suburban dream life.

Some stories refuse to stay buried.

For best friends Nikki and Sadie, college was supposed to be a fresh start, a way to blast Courtney Love from car speakers and leave their youth behind. But along with sadness-obsessed girls and intrusive professors, a dark story plagues their small all-women's school: the Sylvia Club, a campus legend surrounding the deaths of multiple Sylvia Plath-adoring students, all written off as suicides. Aspiring writer Nikki finds herself drawn to the tragic tales, so much so that dead girls begin to haunt her dark imagination. As she digs deeper, Nikki soon suspects there's much more to the story - a suspicion that will lead to a tragedy of its own, one that will tear her and Sadie apart.

It's been nearly twenty years since Sadie last saw her estranged friend. Now, Nikki is dead, and when Sadie ends up pregnant by Nikki's grieving husband not long after the funeral, she finds herself stepping into her ex-best friend's seemingly perfect life. But the longer Sadie lives in Nikki's eerily preserved home, the more she sees her appear and soon, she's convinced that Nikki is sending her clues from beyond the grave. Because it seems Nikki never stopped looking for answers about what happened to the girls of the Sylvia Club, and she may have been its latest victim.

Told in a dual timeline, Doll Parts is a provocative and irresistible debut, at once an exploration of the dark the chasms that break apart friendships, an ode to the aching beauty of girlhood, and a sharp portrayal of grief that can physically haunt you.
  • Published: 26 August 2025
  • ISBN: 9781464245145
  • Imprint: Sourcebooks Landmark
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $26.00
Categories:

About the author

Penny Zang

Penny Zang is an English professor at Greenville Technical College and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from West Virginia University. Her work has appeared in New Ohio Review, Louisville Review, Superstition Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Greenville, South Carolina with her husband and son.

Praise for Doll Parts

Sad Girl Cult but make it crime fiction: the genre-blending Doll Parts is as dark and evocative as tear-smudged eyeliner, as rebellious and moody as a song by Hole. Part mystery, part bildungsroman, and part paean to female friendship, Zang’s debut examines our cultural obsession with beautiful dead women--and, against a world that might prefer them silent, cold, and pretty, the lengths to which two best friends will go to remain vital, messy, and true to themselves, their bravery reverberating across timelines.

Ashley Winstead, USA Today-bestselling author of Midnight is the Darkest Hour

Doll Parts is the most mesmerizing and original book I’ve read in a long time. It’s eerie and addictive, a story that pulls you in and won’t let go. Penny Zang has a gift, and I would read anything she writes.

Samantha Downing, Internationally Bestselling Author of My Lovely Wife and Too Old For This

Doll Parts is a dark, atmospheric exploration of friendship, exploitation, and female rage. Delving into the most vulnerable and turbulent stages of womanhood, it’s perfect for fans of Megan Abbott and Ashley Audrain.

Robyn Harding, International Bestselling author of The Drowning Woman

Haunted and haunting, Doll Parts is an exquisite exploration and scathing critique of our cultural obsession with pretty dead girls, as well as a riveting mystery pieced together by two fascinating and complex protagonists. Like a beloved collection of poetry, this story is worth carrying around, dog-earing, highlighting, returning to again and again. I loved this book from its very first sentence.

Megan Collins, author of Cross My Heart

Doll Parts is one of the most unexpectedly imaginative, and soulful, suspense novels I’ve read in some time. Following dual mysteries, that of Sadie as she navigates motherhood and life in her late husband’s first wife’s shadow, and Nikki, years earlier, chasing a shadow of her own, Penny Zang creates a unique world infused with deep friendship, grief, and the quiet resilience of becoming. Doll Parts miraculously succeeds on both a level of suspense and lyricism, which, if done well, of course, is the very definition of great poetry.

Lee Kravetz, author of The Last Confessions of Sylvia P.