Jennifer Banash | Author and Editor
When Rolling Stone journalist Kayla McCray is assigned a cover story on pop icon Lexi Mayhem, Kayla stumbles across a startling new angle to the exposé. Years ago, another rising star from Lexi’s past mysteriously leaped to her death. Some things are better off forgotten, Lexi says. Kayla disagrees.
It’s 2005 and Ava Petrova moves to New York with a notebook full of songs and a dream. Then she meets Lexi, an up-and-coming singer who brands Ava with an enigmatic new stage name and introduces her to an intoxicating city alive with possibilities. From fast friends and kindred spirits to creative muses and inseparable soul mates, Ava and Lexi embark on a parallel journey to stardom, but there is room for only one at the top.
As past and present converge, Kayla chases the ghost of a young woman doomed by betrayal and erased by a secret, and unravels the truth that it takes more than ambition to become a star.
Silent Alarm, 2015
Alys’s whole world was comprised of the history project that was due, her upcoming violin audition, being held tightly in the arms of her boyfriend, Ben, and laughing with her best friend, Delilah. At least it was—until she found herself on the wrong end of a shotgun in the school library. Her suburban high school had become one of those places you hear about on the news—a place where some disaffected youth decided to end it all and take as many of his teachers and classmates with him as he could. Except, in this story, that youth was Alys’s own brother, Luke. He killed fifteen others and himself, but spared her—though she’ll never know why.
Alys’s downward spiral begins instantly, and there seems to be no bottom. A heartbreaking and beautifully told story.
White Lines, 2013
I don’t want to be this person anymore, but I’ve been running for so long, I don’t know how to stop, how to stand still, how to begin again.
Seventeen-year-old Cat is club kid royalty, with the power to decide who gets past the velvet rope at some of the hottest clubs in the city. She lives for the night with its high-inducing energy, pulsing music and those seductive white lines that can ease all pain. Her days are something else entirely. Having spent years enduring her mother’s emotional and physical abuse, and abandoned by her father, Cat is terrified and alone. But when someone comes along who makes her want to truly live, she’ll need to summon the courage to confront her demons.
The Elite Series, 2008 - '09
When Casey McCloy steps into the elegant Bramford building, she’s overwhelmed. Fresh from the Midwest, she’s moved to New York’s Upper East Side to live with her grandmother and attend the prestigious Meadowlark Academy. Here all that matters is who you know. The girl to know is Madison Macallister: popular, pretty, platinum blond. She’s not just Casey’s new classmate and neighbor; she’s an icon. So Casey aims to get in with Madison and her gorgeous gal-pals from the start. As the reigning queen of coolness, Madison is capable of destroying reputations with one well-timed whisper. Better to be on her good side.
The three-book series for young adults follows Casey as she tries to learn how to navigate Madison's world — fabulous, wealthy, elite — and shows what happens when the new girl gets maybe too comfortable in the neighborhood she now calls home.