About this item
Sixteen-year-old Lyla lives in a bleak, controlling society where only the brightest and most favored students succeed. When she is caught buying cheats in an underground shadow market, she is tattooed - marked - as a criminal. Then she is offered redemption and she jumps at the chance . . . but it comes at a cost. Doing what is right means betraying the boy she has come to love, and, perhaps, losing even more than she thought possible. Graphic novel-style vignettes revealing the history of this world provide Lyla with guidance and clues to a possible way out of the double bind she finds herself in.
About the Author
Laura Williams McCaffrey was born and raised in Vermont. She attended Barnard College of Columbia University, then returned to Vermont and eventually became a school librarian, answering to the names "Ms. Librarian," "Library Lady," and sometimes simply "Ms. Library." She now writes, teaches, and edits full-time. Her short stories have been published by Cicada, YA Review Network, Solstice Literary Magazine, and Soundings Review. "Crow's Face" (YA Review Network) is a 2017 Pushcart Prize Nominee. "Into the Vast" (YA Review Network) won the SCBWI 2014 Magazine Merit Award for fiction. Kirkus Reviews called Marked (Clarion Books, 2016) , a dystopian fantasy for teens, "an original, textured page-turner." She's the author of two children's fantasy novels, Water Shaper (Clarion Books, 2006) and Alia Waking (Clarion Books, 2003) . Water Shaper was selected for the New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age 2007 list. Alia Waking was named an International Reading Association Notable Book. It was also a nominee for the annual Teens' Top Ten Books list and for Vermont's Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award. Laura is on faculty at Solstice, the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing Program at Pine Manor College, and she's recently joined YA Review Network as its fiction editor. She lives in a small house in the woods with her husband, regionally acclaimed musician Colin McCaffrey, and their daughters. For more information about her or her work, visit her website at: http://www.laurawilliamsmccaffrey.com.
