Trust Me, I'm Lying

Julep Dupree is a teenage con artist and master of disguise, the daughter of an old-school grifter who has enrolled her at an elite Chicago prep school so she can learn to move among the wealthy. To fund her ambitions, she runs small, lucrative cons for her classmates while dodging the dean and keeping her grades respectable.

Her carefully managed double life collapses when she comes home to find the apartment ransacked and her father missing, with only a cryptic trail of clues left behind. Determined to find him before the authorities place her in foster care, Julep follows the breadcrumbs through a tangle of stalkers, hit attempts, and buried family secrets.

She enlists help from her loyal hacker friend Sam and from Tyler Richland, a charming and well-connected classmate, as the danger steadily mounts. Fast-paced and laced with sarcastic wit, the story pairs heist-style cleverness with a teen mystery, channeling the appeal of caper films into a young-adult thriller.

As the cons grow higher-stakes and the threats more real, Julep must decide whom she can trust in a world built on deception, including, sometimes, herself.