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Overview
On a single night, five children suddenly vanish from their homes in Paris, Glasgow, Rome, and London. Years later, five enigmatic teenagers make an impressive entrance at an exclusive New York holiday party with their strange but beautiful governess, Madame Vileroy. Rumor and intrigue follow the Faust children to the elite Manhattan Marlowe School, where their very presence brings unexplainable misfortune.
Using “gifts” given to them by Madame Vileroy, these mysterious teenagers rise to suspicious heights at Marlowe. Though at first their abilities seem almost childlike in their simplicity, they soon learn that their newfound talents for cheating, stealing, hiding, and lying are far more potent than they had ever imagined — and far more addictive.
Ignoring the side effects of pursuing their individual obsessions, bargaining with the very devil in their midst as they claw their way to the top, these five ambitious teens draw ever nearer to their goals . . . until two of them uncover a secret even more shocking than their own most unforgivable sins. Dialing up the ancient dilemma of indulgence versus redemption, this modern-day retelling of the Faustian bargain story, set in twenty-first-century Manhattan, provides a look into the cutthroat world of high-school competition that is both bitingly funny and scorchingly wicked.
Synopsis
On a single night, five children suddenly vanish from their homes in Paris, Glasgow, Rome, and London. Years later, five enigmatic teenagers make an impressive entrance at an exclusive New York holiday party with their strange but beautiful governess, Madame Vileroy. Rumor and intrigue follow the Faust children to the elite Manhattan Marlowe School, where their very presence brings unexplainable misfortune.
Using “gifts” given to them by Madame Vileroy, these mysterious teenagers rise to suspicious heights at Marlowe. Though at first their abilities seem almost childlike in their simplicity, they soon learn that their newfound talents for cheating, stealing, hiding, and lying are far more potent than they had ever imagined — and far more addictive.
Ignoring the side effects of pursuing their individual obsessions, bargaining with the very devil in their midst as they claw their way to the top, these five ambitious teens draw ever nearer to their goals . . . until two of them uncover a secret even more shocking than their own most unforgivable sins. Dialing up the ancient dilemma of indulgence versus redemption, this modern-day retelling of the Faustian bargain story, set in twenty-first-century Manhattan, provides a look into the cutthroat world of high-school competition that is both bitingly funny and scorchingly wicked.
Publishers Weekly
In this sibling duo's debut, an unusual urban fantasy, five 10-year-olds—overachieving Victoria, homeless writer Christian, twins Bicé and Belle, and fame-hungry poet Valentin—disappear from their homes and are adopted by the beautiful, mysterious Madame Vileroy. Their families forget them, and they emerge in New York City five years later as the rich Faust siblings, joining the exclusive Marlowe School midyear. Each of the teens has been given a unique power (stopping time, mind-reading, bewitching beauty), though not all of them know the real cost. The novel's pace can be languid, though it picks up once the school year starts and the Fausts learn about the nature of evil and who Vileroy really is. The writing is clever and stylish (“Bicé left a trail of moments like this, when people came away from her feeling better somehow—the kind of moments that were the very opposite of all those little evils that Madame Vileroy left in her wake”) and the dips in and out of reality almost conceal the characters' superficiality. It's an absorbing, imaginative read, with a tense climax. Ages 14–up. (Aug.)