Hardcover | 352 pages Fiction / Coming Of Age The author of Black Chalk, "the smart summer thriller you've been waiting for" (NPR), returns with a mesmerizing new novel about a dangerous secret society at Oxford University, and the first-year Literature student whose life begins to unravel in its shadow *A New York Post Best Beach Read!* The author of Black Chalk, "the smart summer thriller you've been waiting for" (NPR), returns with a mesmerizing new novel about a dangerous secret society at Oxford University, and the first-year Literature student whose life begins to unravel in its shadow When Ali McCain, an eighteen-year-old from Los Angeles, is accepted at Oxford, it’s a chance to fulfill his dreams. To study English literature in England; to meet true intellectuals; and to glimpse the life he might have lived had his father—British rock star Gel McCain, legendary frontman of the Pale Fires—not abandoned him and his mother when he was a toddler.