Showing results by author "Khristina Chess" in All Categories

For fans drawn to the unsettling seduction of a dark romance like Dreamland comes a chilling thriller about a runaway teen drawn into a relationship with an older man who takes her in—and won’t let her go! Love isn’t supposed to take prisoners. Sixteen-year-old Grace Keegan, darling of the child pageant world, is missing. At first, police assume she ran away. But when they find her abandoned phone along the highway, the truth becomes far more terrifying. No one knows about Quentin Brock—the musician she met online. He’s charming, funny, and perfect. Until he isn’t. Until she’s...

Named a Finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. A romantic love triangle that will appeal to fans of Girl in Pieces and Thinspo--this compelling story explores insecurity and the power of words to hurt and to heal. When tall, gorgeous Brody asks Olivia to prom, she’s ecstatic—until he suggests she use the next two months to lose some weight. But how thin is thin enough? What starts as a few skipped meals spirals into a dangerous obsession—hours spent scrolling pro-ana and thinspo forums, tracking calories like a lifeline, and watching the number on the scale plummet. The ...

Perfect for fans of We Are Not From Here, this searing novel introduces Teódulo, an unaccompanied minor providing a rare male perspective on immigration, as he flees from murdering coyotes, only to become ensnared by human traffickers. After smugglers execute his father, Teódulo escapes and embarks on a harrowing journey to the United States alone. At the border, violent cartel members capture him and force him into brutal labor at a meat processing plant. Everyone pays to cross—one way or another. Freedom is not free. He doesn’t speak English. He doesn’t even know where he is. His ...

For fans of Heroine and You’d Be Home Now comes a darkly unique look at the physical and mental toll of opioid withdrawal amidst the wreckage of a natural disaster. Historic, deadly tornadoes ravage the entire state and leave Savannah home alone. Nothing is where it’s supposed to be—not the roof, not the cat, and certainly not Savannah’s mother. But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is the empty pill bottle. With roads blocked and power out across multiple counties, Savannah has no way to get more painkillers. As her neighbors band together to rebuild their community, ...

Stranger Things meets A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder in this haunting 1980s mystery about a girl who vanishes and the one friend who refuses to let her stay forgotten. March, 1980: Fifteen-year-old Rosie Fields vanishes. The police call her a runaway—just another statistic in a decade before AMBER alerts and 24-hour news. But Bobby knows better. He was one of the last people to see her, and he knows something dreadful happened in the shadows of their small town. Driven by friendship and loyalty, he embarks on a relentless hunt for the truth: Why did Rosie lie about where she was going ...

For readers drawn to the emotional and physical scars of Girl in Pieces, this empowering story about the complicated nature of friendship is for you. Sadie and Elana are keeping dangerous secrets. Best friends since elementary school, they know everything about each other, but on the night of the fireworks, something terrible happened to Sadie—something she can’t even name. Instead, she’s started cutting to deal with the pain. But Elana has a secret of her own. She’s texting Hunter, making plans for a clandestine meeting, and never questioning why he insists on hiding their ...

"Just eat." Those were the last words eighteen-year-old Molly said to her older sister, Kat, before the "accident." Now, Kat is a skeletal figure on life support, and Molly is haunted by the weeks of warnings she chose to ignore. The fainting spells, the stumbles, the desperate calls for help—Molly dismissed them all as attention-seeking. But as the doctors prepare to turn off the ventilator, Molly’s guilt transforms into an obsession. She’s convinced Kat’s rental house is a crime scene. She’s certain the landlord is hiding something, and that Kat’s ex-boyfriend has blood on his...

Perfect for fans of This Is Where It Ends and We Need to Talk about Kevin, this dark YA psychological thriller explores the chilling intersection of bullying, mental illness, and the quiet complicity that allows tragedy to happen. Riley is not a psychopath. Or at least, that’s what he tells himself. Born unable to decode human emotions, Riley finds the world a confusing, mind-numbing place. That is, until he meets Henry. Brilliant, unpredictable, and dangerous, Henry believes the world is populated by robots and shadow monsters. He sleeps with a knife under his mattress. For Riley, ...

Winner of the Reader Views Reviewers Choice Award for Young Adult Fiction. For fans of The Glass Girl, this poignant tale of loss, addiction, and unexpected love explores the difficult path to healing. What kind of girl starts drinking after a drunk driver kills her mom? Sixteen months ago, Adriana’s world shattered. Now, she’s drowning her sorrow. With her father frequently traveling and her sister absorbed in college life, nobody notices her spiral into despair or the missing wine bottles. Alcohol becomes her refuge—a way to numb the pain and help her temporarily forget her awful ...

The Stand meets the sharp wit of a modern rom-com in this dystopian survival story about a girl who discovers the end of the world is a lot harder without her favorite snacks. It starts with a click. The lights go out. The cell towers die. A magnificent aurora dances in the southern sky. Eighteen-year-old Zoey quickly realizes she can’t stay home alone in her parents’ empty condo. Packing her snacks and signature sarcasm, she teams up with her neighbor Kent to seek sanctuary at Coywood Creek. Their harrowing journey through a crumbling world requires not just survival skills, but a ...

One wrong step. One brutal attack. One impossible choice. Perfect for fans of Hatchet and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, this white-knuckle survival thriller follows a teenage girl’s desperate escape through the unforgiving Appalachian wilderness. No food. No water. No signal. While walking a remote rural road, Melender and her mother are ambushed by a pack of feral dogs and forced over a near-vertical cliff. They land on a jagged ledge—wounded, stranded, and completely alone. No one knows where they are, and no one is coming to save them. To save her mother’s life, Melender must ...

Perfect for fans of All the Bright Places and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, this high-stakes novel follows a burned-out teen grappling with the suffocating cost of perfection. Kim is a girl with big plans. She’s on track to be class valedictorian, a scholarship hopeful, and—since her parents’ divorce bombshell—the unpaid therapist for her broken family. Bouncing between her parents’ houses, she’s torn between listening to her mom’s bitterness and watching her dad lose weight and clean his guns. The pressure is a physical weight, and her grade point average is the only thing...

One mistake. Twelve weeks. A future that hangs in the balance. Kansas Jones has her life calculated to the millisecond: Class president, varsity swimmer, and a straight-A student destined for MIT. Her only focus is the R2-RoboCon competition—until a positive pregnancy test crashes her perfectly programmed world. Now, the girl who always has the right answers is facing a question with no easy solution. But the choice becomes even more complicated when her aunt’s final attempt at IVF fails. Kansas knows she could be the answer to her aunt’s prayers, but an open adoption means staying ...