"I really enjoyed Game of Secret! It reminded me of The Bone Season meets X-Men in how it addresses identity, loyalty, and the labels that the world can force upon you. London in 1887 is the perfect setting for this book with its call-back to the supernatural elements of the old penny dreadfuls at odds with a proud society on the brink of modernism and technology. It's an exciting, captivating, and inspiring story for any teen who has ever felt out of place, torn in two between the comfort of the familiar and the thrill of an unknown future. This is a great debut!" C. V. Wyk, author of Blood and Sand
Description:
Release Date: July3rd, 2018
Felicity Cole sells flowers in the streets of Victorian London to feed herself and her young brother. But she has a close-guarded secret—her brother is a Tainted, born with special abilities that society fears and a shadowy organization called the Hunstsmen scours the country to eliminate. When Felicity becomes the target of one of these individuals, she discovers something horrible: she’s Tainted, too.
Rescued by a mysterious gentleman on the eve of execution, she's whisked away to a school funded by Queen Victoria, established to train selected Tainted into assassins in service of the crown.
Struggling to harness her incredible strength, speed, and agility, and despised by her classmates, all she wants is to use her new position to find a cure so she can be normal and reunited with her brother.
But with the Golden Jubilee fast approaching and the discovery that there’s a traitor in their midst, she has no choice but to embrace the one thing she’s been fighting all along.
EXCERPT
Movement around me slows. The mist from the horses’ nostrils hangs suspended in the air. Carriage wheels on cobbles and the bells from St. Paul’s Cathedral sound stifled—dampened and low.
I see everything at once. Time bends, curving around me.
Locals and customers cower in the market, screams frozen on their faces. They crouch behind carts. A surge goes to my muscles and somehow I know—I just know—I can do impossible things. I am not thinking. I am pure rage. A deep burning takes hold of my bones.
I reach Kit’s murderer in a heartbeat. Impossibly fast. Before he can fire his pistol again, I punch forward, catching him square in the throat. His eyes pop wide. I chop the hand that holds the gun and it skitters away on the ground. He staggers. I punch him again, smashing his nose, and blood spurts everywhere. I kick at his knees, sending him to the ground. I don’t know what I’m doing, or how I’m doing it, only that it’s coming from somewhere deep inside.
Everything around me is slow, like it’s moving through water. Sliding like molasses. But I am a spark. Fire. Lightning.
I hear the report of a gun—a dull, low rumble, not the sharp crack it should be—and I have time to spin. The bullet tears from the footman’s weapon in a plume of smoke. But I don’t feel the sharp agony of the shot. Instead, I see the bullet as it comes toward me. It moves through the air trailing a spiraling smoke wisp behind it like a comet. I slide out of the way, ducking easily underneath it.
With a slow, deep thud it slams harmlessly into a vegetable cart behind me, smashing into the cabbages and sending a fountain of dusty hay into the air.
And now the footman is mine.
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About the author:
Kim Foster is the author of the Agency of Burglary & Theft series for adults and GAME OF SECRETS, her YA debut. She has a typical background for someone who writes thrillers about thieves and spies and criminals: she has a degree in medicine and is a practicing family doctor. (Don’t worry, it doesn’t make much sense to her friends and family, either.)
She's addicted to yoga, loves to travel, and has a clinical weakness for dark chocolate with sea salt. Online, you can find her at www.kimfoster.com. She lives with her husband and their two young sons in Victoria, British Columbia.
- l winner will receive a $20 Amazon eGift Card
- Open internationally
- Ends July 5th
Terrific descriptive writing in the excerpt - I can hear the horses' hooves on the damp cobbles!
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to reading Game of Secrets. Thank you
ReplyDeleteMine always shows as Unknown but it's Maranda H. :)
ReplyDeleteI think the cover is simple but well made as the pop of red caught my eye and that's the first synopsis in months that's left me wanting to read the book ASAP!
I just love your cover.
ReplyDeletethe excerpt sounds great thanks
ReplyDeleteI love the cover art. Sounds like a great read.
ReplyDeleteI love the cover!
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