Ruth Ware's 6 favorite books about boarding schools

The best-selling author recommends works by Dorothy L. Sayers, Antonia White, and more

Ruth Ware.
(Image credit: Ollie Grove)

The Chalet School in Exile by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer (Girls Gone By e-book, $9).

I've always loved boarding school stories. Midnight feasts; apple-pie beds; the secret language of prefects, cubicles, and dorms — who could fail to be seduced? However, I could see that the reality of life shut up with your school friends 24/7 might not be quite as rosy, and my fascination with the sharp edge of this fantasy fed into The Lying Game. The Chalet School series, set at a British school in Switzerland, was my first step away from the cheeriness of Enid Blyton's Malory Towers series. The Chalet School books are poignantly European, and the "Peace League" pledge the girls make at the outbreak of World War II is prescient, political, and genuinely moving.

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