The Emily Calby Series

Twelve-year-old Emily was a good girl from a good family in rural Georgia before the day the two men came. The only survivor of the notorious Calby Murders, she ran away and went missing. Ex-gang member Lucas Jackson took her in off the streets and became her family. He taught her a lot, including how to survive—and kill. Justice. Always comes too late, but it’s still justice. His words became Emily’s raison d’être.

The Emily Calby Series tracks Emily’s perilous life and remarkable journey forward from the day of the home invasion to her first semester of law school. The three titles are spaced four years apart in Emily’s life: The Hiding Girl (age 12); The Girl in Cell 49B (age 16); Target: The Girl (age 20). The books can be read together or as standalones, as each title involves a distinct plot and setting.

Emily’s story is a twisty, action-packed coming-of-age adventure that will have you cheering, cringing, crying, and, yes, laughing. Dark and gritty, but filled with heart and hope, The Emily Calby Series is a testament to the boundlessness of human love, strength … and grief.

Awards for The Emily Calby Series

— Best Psychological Thriller of 2021 (BestThrillers.com)

— Publishers Weekly BookLife Prize Semifinalist

— 2021 Indiereader Discovery Award For Fiction

— Feathered Quill Medal for Mystery/Suspense

— Readers’ Favorite Awards in both Suspense and New Adult Fiction

— National Indie Excellence Award Finalist

— Finalist, Best Legal Thriller of the Year (BestThrillers.com)

The Hiding Girl (Emily Calby Book 1)

Twelve-year-old Emily Calby was a good girl from a religious family in rural Georgia. She loved softball, her little sister and looking up words to get her allowance. Then two men came and murdered her family. Only the killers know she survived.

On the run, surviving by wits and animal instinct, she makes an unlikely ally in an ex-gang member who lost his own family to violence. He takes her in and trains her in “self-defense” before more tragedy launches her on a terrifying journey for justice. Nothing will stop her—not cops or creeps, not even her own splintering mind. Through it all, Emily fights to hold onto hope and the girl she once knew, kept buried deep inside.

Dark and gritty, but filled with heart and hope, The Hiding Girl is a twisty, fast-paced thriller and a testament to the boundless limits of human love, sacrifice and the will to survive.

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The Girl in Cell 49B (Emily Calby Book 2)

Emily Calby disappeared at age twelve, the only survivor of a notorious home invasion. Three years after her terrifying odyssey in The Hiding Girl, she’s safe, living in anonymity with her mentor, ex-gang member Lucas Jackson—before life blows up again on her Sweet Sixteen birthday. Arrested for carrying her birthday gift (an illegal handgun), a fingerprint scan shows her to be the “missing Calby girl” and worse: she’s wanted for murder in another state.

Extradited to a corrupt juvenile prison, Emily struggles to adjust to a new code of survival while battling a vindictive prosecutor willing to resort to any means to convict her. As The Law thwarts her every move, she begins to appreciate its awesome power. She discovers an unused prison law library and buries herself in the books, casting her destiny.

As she fights for her life in court, the dark secrets behind the prison walls close in. Her cellmate, a spookily prescient drug addict, is in grave danger. So is her first love, a gentle boy sentenced to life without parole. Emily’s desperate to help them, but how can she, when her explosive trial brings one new disaster after another? A courtroom thriller like no other.

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Target: The Girl (Emily Calby Book 3)

Emily Calby’s destiny as a justice seeker was cast at age twelve when two men invaded her rural Georgia home and murdered her family. The only survivor, she ran away and went missing. Ex-gang member Lucas Jackson took her in off the streets and became her family. He taught her a lot, including how to survive—and kill. Arrested for murder at sixteen, Emily discovered a different path to justice in a prison library. The Law.

Now she’s twenty and excited to start law school in sunny Florida. One problem. She’s being stalked. Or is she? Deeply traumatized by her past, she lives in a state of hypervigilance where the ordinary seems ominous. A moved houseplant. An anonymous welcome note. A broken starfish. They’re nothing … but still.

Determined to be the warrior and survivor Lucas taught her to be, she suffers in secret while struggling to navigate the rites and rigors of law school, where trouble follows her every move. From a budding romance that’s not what it seems to a legendary professor in need of help—and Justice.

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