Red City

Los Angeles in this alternate version of the city is run by crime syndicates, and the product they fight over is alchemy, sold as a drug called sand. The city's elites take it to become sharper, stronger and closer to perfect, and each syndicate treats a piece of the city as its own ground.

Sam grows up the daughter of a poor single mother and wants a place in the Grand Central syndicate, whatever it costs her. Ari was taken from his family as a boy and raised as an apprentice in the Lumines, a rival power structure that holds his loyalty. Both are alchemists, and each climbs through a different faction.

The two rise as the war between the syndicates escalates. Ambition and power start to look like the same thing, loyalties turn into lies, and neither one may be able to perfect themselves enough to survive what comes.

The book is adult fantasy built on organized crime, with a tone borrowed from Godfather-style mob stories and a corrupt, glittering city as the backdrop. It opens the series The New Alchemists and marks the author's move from young adult dystopias to adult fiction.