It’s up to Tess, Theo, and Jaime to uncover the Morningstarrs’ final mystery in a desperate attempt to set things right. The world has rested on a precarious balance of power for generations now Slant and his shadowy business partners aim to unbalance it. Darnell Slant, real estate developer and owner of all the Morningstarr buildings, knows that they hold one last secret: a power that even the Morningstarrs themselves never revealed. The stakes of completing the cipher, however, have never been higher. As the city continues to break around them, suddenly solving the greatest mystery of the modern world seems less important than saving their own friendship. Tess and Theo have no idea what the photo they found in Greenwood Cemetery means, but Jaime is convinced that they do, and that they’ve been keeping their own secrets from him. It was only a few days ago that Tess Biedermann, Theo Biedermann, and Jaime Cruz, along with a mysterious figure from the past, managed to survive an assault on the location of the latest clue in the Morningstarr cipher-and, in the process, made a shocking discovery about their own connection to this one-hundred-sixty-year-old enigma. The thrilling conclusion to two-time National Book Award finalist Laura Ruby’s epic adventure through the streets of an alternate New York City.

Laura has been a featured speaker at BookExpo, The American Library Association’s national convention, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) annual convention, the Miami Book Festival, the Florida Association of Media Educators (FAME) convention, the Midwest Literary Festival, the International Reading Association’s annual convention, and the Illinois Reading Council annual conference, among other venues, and she has presented programs and workshops for both adults and children at numerous schools and libraries.

She is on the faculty of Hamline University’s Masters in Writing for Children Program. Other works include the Edgar-nominated children’s mystery Lily’s Ghost, the ALA Quick Pick for teens Good Girls (2006), a collection of interconnected short stories about blended families for adults, I’m Not Julia Roberts (2007), and the York trilogy. She is the author of the Printz Medal Winning novel Bone Gap, as well as the novel Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All, both National Book Award Finalists. Laura Ruby writes fiction for adults, teens and children.

Good Girls by Laura Ruby