The Art of Escaping

Seventeen-year-old Mattie is obsessed with Harry Houdini and Dorothy Dietrich, but she doesn't want anyone to know. She doesn't even tell her best friend Stella, let alone anyone from her high school. After Stella leaves to attend boarding school for the summer, Mattie isn't sure how to spend her time, and all of her anxieties come to a head. After a night of heavy drinking at a local speakeasy, she finally decides to indulge her interests and seeks out the reclusive Miyu, who is the daughter of a famed escapologist, and convinces her to train Mattie in the art of escapology.

When Will, a popular jock from Mattie's high school, accidentally stumbles into one of Mattie's escape performances, she's sure that he will spill her secret and send her world crumbling down. But he has a secret of his own, and no one saw it coming.

Erin Callahan of Pembroke, NH

Erin grew up by a small glacial lake in New Hampshire and, after brief stints in Colorado and Rhode Island, she settled back in the Granite State with her husband and daughter. As a small child, she told her mother she’d defaced a wall with crayons because she’d been possessed by an imp. She’s convinced that same imp drives her to write. When she’s not at her day job or cranking out novels on her laptop, you can find her soaking in the new golden era of television, stalking her favorite musicians on Twitter, and trying not to embarrass herself on the volleyball court. She loves giant squids and the color red, hates the phrase “no offense,” and thinks birds are creepy.

Once upon a time, she was a lawyer but found herself unemployed at the height of the recession. For her own sanity she started writing, and to make ends meet she took a job at a residential program for teens. The kids she met there will forever serve as a well of inspiration for the contemporary YA she writes.

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