Adele Liles

Adele Liles has been a high school English teacher for 24 years, providing her constant inspiration for writing young adult fiction. She has been a finalist in the Writer’s Workout Fiction Potluck contest and her work has been published in the North Carolina Bards Poetry Anthology and accepted for publication in Wild Ink’s upcoming Tenpenny Dreadful’s Tales as Hard as Nails Horror Anthology. She lives with her husband and their “tiny panther” in Virginia, where she can be found working on her next YA contemporary novel or watching a ridiculous amount of reality TV. 

Among the Whisperings

A girl so intoxicating nobody could resist her. And she played them all. 

Seventeen-year-old scholarship student Carra Nichols transfers to the prestigious Ash Valley Academy in pursuit of her dream of gaining admission to Princeton, but her education comes at a price higher than the tuition. When she meets her wealthy and popular dorm neighbor Gabby, a manipulative thrill-seeker who hosts slumber parties featuring illicit and sometimes dangerous party games, she becomes obsessed with maintaining their new friendship. 

Having been shunned by a popular friend in the past, Carra fears losing her place at Gabby’s side, and in order to please her, complies with her every whim. As the nights grow darker and the games more intense, she becomes someone she doesn’t recognize, going down a path of self-destruction that will keep her place but could cost her the Princeton admission. 

But Carra isn’t the only one reinventing herself. Gabby isn’t who she pretends to be, and her carefully orchestrated world is part of a deadly agenda that ends in a party game that will cost someone their life.

Eliminated

Eighteen-year-old Carmody Talbott and her classmates just became Senior Assassins armed with water guns. As part of a tradition, they’ve joined the game, the last hurrah before graduation. The premise is simple: Within the established rules set up by an anonymous council known as The Syndicate, eliminate your assigned targets. But The Syndicate isn’t playing by the rules, isn’t playing a game—they’re playing for real. When someone gets eliminated, they face real-world repercussions because The Syndicate publicizes one of their secrets. Failure to eliminate their targets by graduation will also result in exposed secrets. When the players attempt to quit, The Syndicate sends a message: keep playing or risk physical injury from them. Terrified of having her darkest truths revealed and her classmates never viewing her the same again, Carmody fights to stay alive in the game while she and her friends try to unmask and stop The Syndicate before they hurt anyone else.