When you hear that there's a prestigious prep school—called, nudgingly, the Goode School—that accepts only the brightest girls from the best families and steers them to the Ivies, you know there will be secrets, secret societies, and a student suicide pointing to dark and dubious behavior that everyone's let happen until now. Following the New York Times best-selling author's Tear Me Apart; with a 250,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing.

The Goode School, located in a small Virginia town, is the prep school of choice for daughters of the rich and influential. Enter Ash Carlisle, a privileged British girl who recently lost her parents in a double suicide. Ash is trying to remain incognito as she starts her new life at the school while trying to forget the tragedies of her past. But all is not what it seems. Rumors about Ash abound. Beneath the respectable surface of the school bubbles a cauldron of lies and deceit. Then a student dies in a fall from the bell tower, and the whispers begin, saying that Ash did it. Another student death, an obvious murder, is the catalyst that brings everything to a head, exposing all the lies and peeling away the layers of deceit. VERDICT Ellison (Tear Me Apart) has created a complex, convoluted plot that mystery fans will savor.—Sandra Knowles, formerly South Carolina State Lib., Columbia

Ash Carlisle, the heroine of this high-tension thriller from bestseller Ellison (Tear Me Apart), leaves the U.K. after the death of her parents to attend the Goode School, an exclusive girls' boarding school in Marchburg, Va. Ash knows that graduating from Goode will be her ticket to an Ivy League college. But as she settles in as a sophomore, she's unprepared for the meanness of the other girls and the hazing she faces when tapped for one of Goode's secret societies. When a student is found dead, an apparent suicide, the police question Ash and others who knew the victim. The dean, who worries about the potential bad publicity for the school, and the police think that Ash may be hiding something. As the body count rises, Ash's involvement with the deceased seems too much of a coincidence to be ignored. Alternating points of view raise the suspense, blurring the lines between what's true and false. No one among the cast of calculating characters is above suspicion. Ellison keeps readers guessing throughout. Agent: Scott Miller, Trident Media Group. (Dec.)