I'm so happy to announce Courtney Farrell has followed up her YA novel
ENHANCED with its sequel, SACRIFICED. I can't wait to read it! But until then, let me share a little about Courtney and her latest novel.
Courtney Farrell was once a molecular biologist, but her
habit of daydreaming destroyed far too
many experiments. Writing down the
movies in her head turned out to be a lot more fun than lab work. Courtney is
the author of three novels and fourteen nonfiction books for young people,
mostly on social and environmental topics. She lives with her family on a
Colorado ranch where they support a barn full of freeloading animals, including
a fat draft horse and a bunch of crazy chickens.
You can say hello to Courtney at her hang-outs:
Blog
www.courtneyfarrell.com
Sacrificed-- the
exciting sequel to Enhanced
By Courtney Farrell
At the Institute, they breed the best and kill the rest. Sixteen-year-old
Michelle is a survivor, but she’s a pawn in their game. A remote arctic military
base mysteriously goes silent. The Institute’s founder needles his old enemy,
the colonel, by sending teenagers to help. Michelle’s half-breed boyfriend Dillon
makes the team, along with her hot ex, who won’t give her up. At the base,
Norms attack. The rebels capture Michelle, but they’re not the brutal savages
she imagined. Their cause is a just one. Will she take up arms against her own
kind?
Meanwhile, Dillon faces his own temptations. As
a half-breed, he’d never succeed at Headquarters, but military doctors think
he’s special. The colonel offers him a sweet deal, with money, status, and
beautiful girls. All Dillon has to do is wipe out the Norms who are harboring
Michelle.
Off to read my copy of SACRIFICED but before I do, here is a bit of a teaser/excerpt from Courtney Farrell's, SACRIFICED:
Sunshine
beamed down on a flower-filled meadow. Dillon sat cross-legged on the grass,
the focal point in a circle of teenage girls and young women. Most of them were
beauties, and Dillon was the only man there. Under the circumstances, he
couldn’t enjoy it much.
“Dillon, tell
them what you told me,” Tina said. “About my little sister and the other
missing girls.”
Dillon tried
to talk but his throat tightened up. He managed to choke out a few words.
“They…aren’t coming back.”
Tina only
waited a couple of heartbeats before she got impatient and told the story
herself. “The same thing happens to all the missing girls. Creepy doctors get
them pregnant with more of those . . . those . . .”
“Enhanced,”
Dillon supplied.
“Enhanced
babies. They’re transferred from women who think they’re too perfect,” Tina spat the word, “for
pregnancy.”
“Eeuw,” a
girl murmured. “They can do that?”
“That is jus’
wrong,” another girl said, shaking her head.
Dillon
interrupted the cross talk. “After the babies are born, they don’t need the
mothers any more. We don’t know for sure, but we think they probably kill
them.”
A collective
gasp rose up from the circle of women. A few of the younger ones began to cry.
Dillon
squirmed under the pressure of a dozen pairs of eyes. They’re expecting me to have all the answers, and I don’t. “I’ve
got a plan, though. It’s scary as hell, but if you help me, we might be able
make it work.”
“Scary as
hell?” Tina repeated, with a trace of her old abrasive manner.
Dillon wilted
under the women’s dubious stares. “Well, um, yeah. This might be kind of
half-baked, but it’s all I can think of. I have two ideas, and they both start
the same way. A bunch of girls, all alone in the woods—except for the men
hiding all around them.”
“Oh, shit!”
Tina exclaimed. “We’re the bait.”
Dillon
nodded. “Yeah. So, like I said, we can do this one of two ways. The first way’s
less scary, but also less likely to be successful.”
“Just tell us
what it is, Dillon,” Tina snapped.
“Okay. I need
you girls to go off in the woods. Light a big fire. Sing and drum, make
yourselves real obvious out there. I’m betting Enhanced soldiers will show up
and try to grab you.” Dillon waited for the moans to die down before
continuing. “They’ll dart you from the trees with tranquilizer guns. If you get
hit, you’ll pass out. Then they haul you off. We can try and prevent that,
shooting ‘em as they arrive. But they’ll scatter and run, and it’ll be hard to
see them in the dark. Besides, they have night-vision goggles and fully
automatic rifles, and we don’t. A bunch of us could die.”
“Probably will, you mean. What’s your other
plan?” Tina asked. “Because I don’t care what it is, I’ll take it. Just about
anything would be better than that.”
Dillon
winced. “My other plan is…we let them dart you.”
All the girls
cried out at once. “What! Why?”
“A man’s a
lot easier to catch with a girl over his shoulder.”
Tina swore.
“I hate you, Dillon.”
“Yeah, I know. Sorry.” Dillon got to his feet,
shoulders slumped. “You don’t have to do this, you know. Talk it over. Find me
once you decide.”
Tina spoke
slowly through clenched jaws, her words clipped. “Sit down. I already decided.
I’ll take the fucking dart.”
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