Galaxy 'Alex' Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale's freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug-dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. In fact, by age twenty, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she's thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend...

Seven years ago, carefree college student Flora was kidnapped while on spring break. Miraculously alive after her ordeal, Flora has spent the past five years reacquainting herself with the rhythms of normal life. When Boston detective D. D. Warren is called to the scene of a crime, a dead man and the bound, naked woman who killed him, she learns that Flora has tangled with three other suspects since her return to society. Is Flora a victim or a vigilante?...

In 2005, scholarship student Rosie Macalister from small-town Western Plains, Ill., is heading back to New Haven, Conn., for her senior year at Yale. When Rosie arrives at the house she shares with four other members of the university's equestrian team, she discovers that she's been assigned a roommate: new recruit Annelise Tattinger. A skilled rider, Annelise's arrival shifts the dynamics in the highly competitive house, causing once unspoken rivalries...