New release: Dare Me

DARE ME by Megan Abbot is the latest Reagan Arthur book and it’s one we’ve been highly anticipating!

About the book:

Since both girls were small, Addy Hanlon has always been Beth Cassidy’s best friend and right-hand lieutenant. Beth calls the shots and Addy carries them out, a long-established order of things that has brought them to the pinnacle of their high-school careers. Now they’re seniors who rule the intensely competitive cheer squad, feared and followed by the other girls – until the young new coach arrives.

Cool and commanding, an emissary from the adult world just beyond their reach, Coach Colette French draws Addy and the other cheerleaders into her life. Only Beth, unsettled by the new regime, remains outside Coach’s golden circle, waging a subtle but vicious campaign to regain her position as “top girl” – both with the team and with Addy herself.

And then a suspicious suicide hits close to home, and the police investigation focuses on Coach and her squad. As Addy begins to suspect what really happened, the line between right and wrong grows blurrier, and she must decide where her loyalties truly lie-and how far is too far to go for someone you love.

The raw passions of girlhood are brought to life in this taut, unflinching exploration of friendship, ambition, and power. Award-winning novelist Megan Abbott, writing with what Tom Perrotta has hailed as “total authority and an almost desperate intensity,” provides a harrowing glimpse into the dark heart of the all-American girl.

About the author:

MEGAN ABBOTT is the Edgar-winning author of the novels Die a Little, The Song Is You, Queenpin and Bury Me Deep, which was nominated for six awards: the 2010 Edgar Award, Hammett Prize, the Macavity, Anthony and Barry Awards and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her upcoming novel, The End of Everything, comes out in July 2011.

Born in the Detroit area, she graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.A. in English Literature and went on to receive her Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University. She lives in Queens, New York City.

Abbott’s stories have appeared in Damn Near Dead: An Anthology of Geezer Noir (2006), Wall Street Noir (2007), Detroit Noir (2007), Storyglossia, Queens Noir (2007), Phoenix Noir and the upcoming Speed Chronicles. Her nonfiction book, The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir, was published in 2003. She is also the editor of the Edgar-nominated A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir, featuring original tales by 25 mystery and crime authors.

Abbott won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award in 2008 for Queenpin. She was previously nominated in 2006 for Best First Novel. In 2008, she won the Barry Award (Deadly Pleasures and Mystery News award) and has been nominated three times for the Anthony Award (Bouchercon World Mystery Convention award).