Lies We Tell about the Stars - by Susie Nadler (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A gorgeous debut YA about friendship, grief, and new beginnings set in near-future San Francisco in the aftermath of a catastrophic earthquake and on the cusp of the first human mission to Mars.

Celeste Muldoon is alone when the Big One finally hits San Francisco, because, for the first time ever, her best friend, Nicky, stood her up after school. The two of them share a birthday, matching tattoos, an obsession with the upcoming Mars mission, dreams of MIT, and pretty much everything else. So why didn't he meet her the way they'd planned?

The earthquake has a huge death toll, and Nicky and Celeste's parents fear the worst--but Celeste doesn't buy it. Nicky spent their senior year selling essays to rich kids and was about to be exposed. Nicky had told Celeste about his plan to vanish, to reinvent himself and escape the disaster he'd created.

But Celeste can't convince anyone that he could still be alive. Only Meo, a mysterious stranger who Nicky was somehow mixed up with seems to believe, but she has every reason to distrust him--even if her heart races every time he shows up.

When Celeste finds Nicky's notebook, it sends her and Meo on a quest across her broken city, up the coast through towns sheltering quake refugees, and eventually all the way to Florida, where the mission to Mars is about to lift off.

About the Author

Susie Nadler was born and raised in San Francisco. She recently spent a blissful year writing a YA novel about her hometown as a Brown Handler Writer-in-Residence at Friends of the SF Public Library, where her office had a view of the City Hall dome. Susie has an MFA in fiction writing from the University of Montana, and her stories have appeared in Story, Inkwell, The Greensboro Review, and New American Writing. She works as a school librarian, where she gets to spend her days talking to kids about books, and in her family's garden shop, where she gets to spend her days writing about palm trees and cacti. She lives near the foot of Sutro Tower with her husband, their twelve-year-old twins, and a very lazy whippet.