Lona Sixteen Always has spent most of her life as someone else. Part of a unique virtual reality experiment for troubled kids who have been “rescued” by the government, she spends twenty-three hours a day on the Path, reliving the decades-old, perfectly ordinary memories of a perfectly ordinary boy. Any other life is unimaginable–until one day someone appears on Lona’s screen who doesn’t belong. Fenn, a boy from her past, has returned to set her free.

Lona is wrenched brutally into an existence that is suddenly all her own, one that promises liberty and love, but also holds threatening secrets. And it turns out that there is a heavy price to pay for straying from her assigned path.

In Stray, Edgar-award winning master of suspense Monica Hesse brings us a richly imagined speculative world where there are no easy answers–and no easy way out.

Lona Sixteen Always is about to become Lona Seventeen Always, but she isn’t feeling older or wiser. Though she escaped from the Path, the virtual reality experiment in which she was raised, she’s learned that real life is full of challenges.

Plagued by strange memories and dreams, and feeling pressured by her friends to just be normal, Lona begins to question her own sanity. She suspects that the only way to feel whole is to solve the mystery of her dreams-it almost feels like someone’s trying to send her a message, but where are the clues pointing? In the bid to find out who she really is, Lona will fall headlong into a trap far more dangerous and cunning than she could ever have imagined.

Edgar-award winning master of suspense Monica Hesse brings us a richly imagined speculative world where sought-after answers could cost the asker everything.

*This ebook includes bonus excerpts from Monica Hesse’s historical fiction novels Girl in the Blue Coat and The War Outside.