The Year of the Gadfly by Jennifer Miller (Houghton Mifflin, $24) and An Uncommon Education by Elizabeth Percer (Harper Collins, $24.99) have been described by critics as heirs to the legacies of such prep school tales as Dead Poets Society and Prep. Students learn about themselves, who they are and who they are willing to push themselves to be.
In The Year of the Gadfly, main character and student journalista extraordinaire Iris Dupont routinely talks to the long-dead journalist Edward Murrow as a personal and professional muse. Her switch to prep school Mariana Academy after the death of a friend changes her own life.