Read an Excerpt From Maureen Johnson’s TRULY DEVIOUS

Check out an excerpt from YA author Maureen Johnson’s new book, TRULY DEVIOUS!

Maureen Johnsonauthor of Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes and co-author of Let it Snow, has a new series coming out in January, and the first book is called Truly Devious. This series is centred around elite – and slightly creepy – boarding school, Ellingham Academy, and the students who try to solve the murder of a fellow classmate. This is not the only mysterious aspect of the trilogy however, with the novel also going back in time and looking at the school’s founder who spent the last years of his life chasing the murderer of his wife and children, with little success.

This is Johnson’s first foray into complete mystery and the description and excerpt (below) from the book seem promising. Check out the excerpt from the opening scene of the book below, and prepare to be hooked!

FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

Photographic image of letter received at the Ellingham residence on April 8, 1936.

Look! A riddle! Time for fun!
Should we use a rope or gun?
Knives are sharp and gleam so pretty
Poison’s slow, which is a pity
Fire is festive, drowning’s slow
Hanging’s a ropy way to go
A broken head, a nasty fall
A car colliding with a wall
Bombs make a very jolly noise
Such ways to punish naughty boys!
What shall we use? We can’t decide.
Just like you cannot run or hide.
Ha ha.
Truly,
Devious

 

April 13, 1936, 6:00 p.m.

You know I can’t let you leave. . . .

Fate came for Dottie Epstein a year before, in the form of a call to the principal’s office.

It was not her first time there.

Dolores Epstein wasn’t sent for any of the normal reasons—fighting, cheating, failing, absence. Dottie would get called down for more complicated matters: designing her own chemistry experiments, questioning her teacher’s understanding of non-euclidian geometry, or reading books in class because there was nothing new to be learned, so the time might as well be spent doing something useful.

“Dolores,” the principal would say. “You can’t go around acting like you’re smarter than everyone else.”

“But I am,” she would reply. Not out of arrogance, but because it was true.

This time, Dottie wasn’t sure what she had done. She had broken into the library to look for a book, but she was pretty sure no one knew about that. Dottie had been in every corner of this school, had worked out every lock and peered in every corner. There was no malicious intent. It was usually to find something or just to see if it could be done.

When she reached the office, Mr. Phillips, the principal, was sitting at his massive desk. There was someone else there as well—a man with salt-and-pepper hair and a marvelous gray suit. He sat off to the side, bathed in a striped beam of sunlight from the window blinds. He was just like someone from the movies. He actually was someone from the movies, in a way.

“Dolores,” Mr. Phillips said. “This is Mr. Albert Ellingham. Do you know who Mr. Ellingham is?”

Read the rest of the excerpt here!

Truly Devious hits shelves on January 16th, 2018.

(source)