Hannah Capin

Hannah Capin reworks familiar stories through contemporary power struggles and sharply voiced teen narrators. Her debut, The Dead Queens Club, was published by Inkyard Press in 2019. The novel moves the six wives of Henry VIII into Lancaster High, where charismatic student Henry gathers a succession of girlfriends around him. Annie “Cleves” Marck narrates as former friends Anna Boleyn and Katie Howard meet suspicious ends, prompting her to reconsider Henry’s version of events. Capin combines historical parallels with a present-day mystery, using friendship, rumor, and social status to examine how persuasive people control a shared story. Her later novel Foul Is Fair, also issued as Golden Boys Beware, draws on Shakespearean tragedy and continues her interest in adaptation. The Dead Queens Club stands apart through its ensemble of recognizable Tudor counterparts and Cleves’s increasingly determined inquiry, which turns a witty school chronicle into a challenge to the mythology surrounding its celebrated central figure.