The Loners

It was just another ordinary day at McKinley High—until a massive explosion devastated the school. When loner David Thorpe tried to help his English teacher to safety, the teacher convulsed and died right in front of him. And that was just the beginning.

A year later, McKinley has descended into chaos. All the students are infected with a virus that makes them deadly to adults. The school is under military quarantine. The teachers are gone. Violent gangs have formed based on high school social cliques. Without a gang, you're as good as dead. And David has no gang. It's just him and his little brother, Will, against the whole school. In this frighteningly dark and captivating novel, Lex Thomas locks readers inside a school where kids don't fight to be popular, they fight to stay alive.

“"Take Michael Grant's Gone (2008) and Veronica Roth's Divergent (2011), rattle them in a cage until they're ready to fight to the death, and you'll have something like this nightmarish debut. It's an apocalypse writ small: a sick teen infects a Colorado high school with a disease so deadly that half the building is blown up by the military and the rest is sealed inside a giant dome. Every two weeks the ceiling is split for an air drop of food and supplies, and it's during these drops that the 1,000 surviving kidssplit into warring cliques with names like the Nerds, the Sluts, and the Freaksfight, steal, and even kill to make good. Due to a pre-contagion feud with Sam, the leader of Varsity (the jocks' gang), David is forced to eke out a loner's existence. But while protecting his younger brother, Will, from the horrors of the darkened hallways, David becomes an underground herowhich begins to infuriate Will, who also longs for the spotlight. Though not totally implausible, this is for fans of gritty sf dystopia, and Thomas' whirlwind pace, painful details ('old socks in a zip-lock freezer bag' serve as one character's pillow), simmering sexual content, and moments of truly shocking ultra-violence thrust this movie-ready high-school thriller to the head of the class." starred, Booklist”

"Though not totally implausible, this is for fans of gritty sf dystopia, and Thomas' whirlwind pace, painful details ('old socks in a zip-lock freezer bag' serve as one character's pillow), simmering sexual content, and moments of truly shocking ultra-violence thrust this movie-ready high-school thriller to the head of the class." —starred, Booklist

Lex Thomas is the pen name for the writing team of Lex Hrabe and Thomas Voorhies, who met in a writers' group and bonded over their mutual fascination with B-movies. Visit them at www.lex-thomas.com.

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