The Art of Secrets

An Edgar Award Winner, Best YA Novel 2015

Where there’s smoke . . .


When Saba Khan’s apartment burns in a mysterious fire, possibly a hate crime, her high school rallies around her. Her family moves into a rent-free luxury apartment, her Facebook page explodes, and she begins (secretly) dating a popular boy.

Then a quirky piece of art donated to a school fund-raising effort for the Khans is revealed to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and Saba’s life turns upside down again. Should Saba’s family get the money? Or the students who found the painting? Or the school?

Monologues, journal entries, interviews, articles, and official documents expose a tangled web of greed, jealousy, and suspicion as students and teachers alike debate, point fingers, and make shocking accusations about what’s really going on.

“Relationships, secrets and lies aplenty.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Will stay on readers’ minds long after the last page.” —Booklist, starred review

“This story . . . culminates in a shocking twist of an ending that will engrossreaders until the very last page.” —The Christian Science Monitor

A Booklist Editor’s Choice Book
A Booklist Top Crime Fiction Book
A Chicago Public Library Best of the Best Book
A Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award Nominee

Trade Paperback / ISBN-13: 9781616204822

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About the Author

James Klise is the author of I’ll Take Everything You Have and The Art of Secrets, winner of the Edgar Award for Best Teen Mystery, the Nevada Young Readers Award, and a Booklist Editor’s Choice Award, among other honors. His first book, Love Drugged, was an ALA Stonewall Honor Award winner and Lambda Literary Award finalist. His short fiction and non-fiction have appeared in the New Orleans Review, StoryQuarterly, Southern Humanities Review, Chicago Tribune, and elsewhere. Mr. Klise earned an MFA from Bennington College. He leads a popular Novel-in-A-Year workshop at StoryStudio in Chicago and, for the past two decades, he has overseen a very busy high school library.

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