Strange Land Home
Katie Keaton is Nancy Drew for the new millennium–with a passport.
She was only ten years old when she watched helplessly as her mother’s murder became an unsolvable cold case. Now a sophomore at The American School in Beijing, Katie longs for a world that makes sense. She makes lists to keep her life ordered: lists of clues proving her father’s low-level diplomat job may be a lie, lists of reasons her secret crush Parker Reed is worth the wait, lists of how she doesn’t stack up to Parker’s girlfriend Vanessa, the ambassador’s perfect daughter, who phased Katie out after a year of being best friends.
Katie’s carefully-constructed reality is shattered when she learns her father has been reassigned back to Nairobi—the same city where her mother was killed. She vows to have one last summer of peace, but before finals even start, Vanessa is found brutally beaten and strangled following a very public fight with Parker. Her murder flips a switch in Katie—one she can’t turn off, because it raises questions that echo her greatest fears. Was there something she could have done to save her old friend? Was there something she could have done to save her mother? Katie digs for answers. Parker is the obvious suspect—and everyone’s convinced he’s a murderer—but something doesn’t fit. Is it that in spending time with him her feelings have ballooned into blinders? When she finds a hint that Vanessa may have had a dangerous secret, Katie risks everything to uncover the truth.
In unraveling the mystery, Katie learns an unbearable fact. Sometimes the truth still leaves you broken.
Mary's Solo Project
Off Book
Seventeen-year-old Lucy Carmichael always assumed her life would be perfect if math-boy-genius Ryan Billings would just do one simple calculation and see that the two of them equal forever. But on the same day he finally kisses her, Lucy gets accepted to a prestigious summer acting program with a potential prize scholarship which means no last summer with Ryan before he leaves for college. To make matters worse, her success at camp is tied to her scene partner, Hollywood royalty A.J. Whitman (yes, his father is the August Whitman) who thinks the whole camp is a joke and has no plans to even act like he’s making an effort. Except something about the way Lucy calls him on his crap starts to chisel away his resolve, and Lucy realizes there’s a much darker story behind the pretty-boy mask than the tabloids report. Is she willing to risk the safe by-the-numbers happy ending she thought she wanted for a broken boy who makes her feel too much?
amy's solo project
Committed
A summer stay at a posh treatment center for adolescents is exactly what sixteen-year-old Callie Leavenworth needs. It will get her away from her unreasonable mother, win her boyfriend’s sympathy, and help her forget what really happened last winter. It was an accident, after all—no one ever meant for a girl to end up dead. But everyone at the psychiatric hospital, including the introverted and mysterious Logan, wants to know what happened that winter night, pressuring a reluctant Callie to tell and retell the story. The version that sets her free could be another death sentence.
