Charles (Volume I): Dangerously bored. Charming to a fault. Harboring a dark side. A sinister secret forced Charles from Australia. Now he's stuck in Spring Valley with his superficial cousin Mason and a bloody endless parade of manicured lawns. The only girl worth his time proves immune to his charms. He has no one to play with. That is, until his cousin's girlfriend Abby shows there’s more to her than meets the eye. Suddenly things get a lot more interesting and a dangerous game is set in motion that may bring his past back to haunt him.
Palmer (Volume II): Whipsmart. Seductive. Will stop at nothing to get what she wants. An ambitious scholarship student at Spring Valley Academy, Palmer is determined to earn her place at an Ivy. She knows deep down that she deserves more than her paltry lot in life. Mason and his family owe her. They owe her big. And if they don’t deliver, she’ll take her secret to the press. The only thing in her way is Mason's goody-goody girlfriend. But against Palmer, Abby doesn't have a prayer.
Mason (Volume III): Athletic. Addicted. Attention-starved. Mason has everything, from his shiny Mercedes G-wagon to his family’s posh compound. And he would be happy, if it weren’t for his needy girlfriend. Abby. Even if he no longer wants her, he can’t stand the thought of her with someone else. Especially Charles, who makes it no secret he plans to steal Abby. With Mason’s volcanic temper, it’s only a matter of time before the rivalry with Charles comes to a head.
Rowan (Volume IV): Clever. Conniving. Life is but a social experiment. Rowan is Abby’s mousy best friend, or so everyone thinks. But Rowan knows Abby only pretends to care about her. Especially when Abby humiliates and betrays her on a double date. Selfish, spoiled people like Abby and Mason deserve to be punished. Rowan knows just how to move the players around the board to make them pay.
The Book Monsters are thrilled to present an Exclusive Excerpt from:
ALIBI: Volume IV, Rowan:
Until Charles came along, all of high school, most especially the boys who went there, were well deserving of the intense disdain Rowan harbored for them. But on the first day of school there was a new student, a tall, disarming Australian who had a locker next to hers. He reached over her shoulder and pulled one of her books from her locker, while Rowan stood there dumbfounded by his boldness and his intense blue eyes.
“Social Networking and Sociology,” he read from the cover in his delectable accent. “That’s an interesting topic.”
Rowan could only stare. He was startlingly handsome. She wasn’t sure he was actually talking to her. He was flipping through the book, a thoughtful expression on his face.
“Yes, it’s really good,” she said quietly, her voice a little strangled by her surprise. “I’m reading it for a project I’m working on.”
“Is that a fact?” he said, seeming to be genuinely interested.
“Yeah, a new kind of social network,” she said cagily.
“What’s new about it?”
“Well, just because our online society affords us the opportunity to reinvent ourselves, even create new identities from thin air, that’s no reason why anyone should be able to pass that personality off as their ‘true’ self,” she said with air quotes. She’d never used air quotes before.
“Yeah,” he said. “Seriously, forget Facebook. Someone should invent a social networking site that makes it next to impossible for anyone to lie about themselves. Warts and all. That’s how it should be.”
“Exactly,” she said. “I’m actually working on an algorithm…”
The bell announcing the next class pealed down the hall, making her jump.
“I’m Charles, by the way.” He stuck out his big hand. “Looks like we’ll be seeing a lot of each other.”
“Rowan,” she said, shaking his hand and staring at him.
“Brilliant to meet you, Rowan,” he said with a big beautiful grin. “See you in a bit.” Then he jogged away from her down the hall, disappearing into a sea of kids. She just stood there, immobilized by the strange giddiness that bubbled inside her. The school year was off to an interesting start.
