ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’d like to thank:

—Melissa Frain, Kathleen Doherty, Linda Quinton, Amy Stapp, and Alexis Saarela of Tor Teen, for giving me a YA home

—Lisa Erbach Vance of the Aaron M. Priest Literary Agency, Stephen F. Breimer, Marc H. Glick, and my team at CAA

—Maureen Sugden, Philip Eisner, Missy Hurwitz, Dana Kaye, expert readers

—Librarians, who fired my imagination from the start

—Booksellers, for decades of support

—My wife. My daughters. My Rhodesian ridgebacks, Simba and Cairo