• Age: 12 to 18
• Grade: 7 to 12

Kaz Barrett isn ’ t saving for college. Every penny he earns working at the sketchy Sit’N’Spin Laundromat is for his mother. He plans to send her to a top-notch (and very expensive) sleep clinic in New York. His mother suffers from an extremely rare neurological disorder that causes her to fall asleep for days at a time. Both he and his kid sister, Nomi, worry that one day, maybe tomorrow, their mother will fall asleep and never wake up ...

At the start of summer, everything seems on track. Come September, Kaz will have earned all he needs and more. However, when anarchic, pink-haired Zoey walks past the laundromat’s window, Kaz’s ordered life begins spinning out of control. Smart, mysterious, and full of music, Zoey is unlike anyone Kaz has met … but there’s another side to her that he can’t quite figure out. When he goes looking for answers, he finds a whirlwind of lies, half-truths, and violence.

And in the eye of the storm, he’ll discover that you really can’t con an honest man ...

Robert Paul Weston is the author of several internationally award-winning books for children and young adults. His first novel, Zorgamazoo, won the Silver Birch Award, the Audie Award, the California Young Reader Medal, and an E.B. White Read Aloud Honor. His second novel was the hard-boiled fairy tale Dust City, which was a Canadian Library Association Young Adult Honour Book and was shortlisted for both the Red Maple Award and the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Young Adult Mystery. His recent novel, The Creature Department, is shortlisted for the Silver Birch Award.

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