A Darker Mischief

Cal Ware grows up poor and queer in Mississippi, a boy who never fits in at home. A scholarship to Essex Academy, an elite boarding school in New England, offers a way out and a chance to become someone new.

The chance goes badly. His classmates sneer at his thrift-store clothes and old iPhone, laugh at his accent, and cannot believe he has never travelled abroad or heard of The Hamptons. Cal is close to quitting and going back south when he hears about a secret society on campus, the surest route to standing among the school's elite.

He doubts he is the kind of student the society takes. Luke Kim, handsome, charismatic and a little dangerous, thinks otherwise and backs him. As the two are drawn into the glamour and mystery of the Rush process, Cal falls in love for the first time.

Then the initiation rituals turn riskier and more sinister. Cal has to decide how far he will go, and how much of himself he will give up, to protect the people and things he cares about most. Even his first love may not be what it appears.

This is a dark academia thriller set in a boarding school, pitched at readers of The Secret History, with old money, privilege and secrecy driving the plot.