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

Book Synopsis

A gorgeous debut 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, because, for the first time ever, her best friend stood her up after school. Nicky and Celeste share a birthday, matching tattoos, an obsession with the upcoming Mars mission, and pretty much everything else. So why did he ghost her on the day she needed him most?

As the quake's death toll rises and days pass, Nicky and Celeste's parents fear the worst. But Celeste doesn't buy it. He couldn't be dead. Nicky'd spent their senior year selling essays to rich kids and was about to get caught. He'd told Celeste about his plan to vanish, to reinvent himself and escape the disaster he'd created. The quake would be perfect cover.

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

When Celeste finds Nicky's notebook, it sends her and Meo on a quest across the 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.