Samuel Brandt woke up with his thoughts written all over his body. His brother woke up with his head missing. His sister woke up to find that her skin would crack open unless she stayed in water. All of the other children in the secluded Iowa town of Oak Knoll woke up having undergone strange transformations. Now, they are all forced to live at 407 West Marshall Street, the mysterious house outside of town. With the new name of The Boy with Words for Skin, Samuel wants nothing more than to hide from his new life. He painfully and unpredictably sheds his skin, there is a Voice in the entryway closet that is often cruel, and-perhaps worst of all for a naturally shy boy-the other children look to him as a leader. As his seven-year-old brother struggles with their new life, as terrifying growls start to come from the pitch black basement, and as his feelings for a girl begin to grow, The Boy with Words for Skin realizes that he wants to change. He wants to put others first, learn from his peers, and let himself hope that things will get better. The Boy with Words for Skin is the first book in the 407 West Marshall Street series. Each book will advance the story but be told from a different character. Book 2 will be The Girl without Eyes.

Do you know what it's like to have been lied to your whole life? To know that you are someone completely different than what you expected? Of corse not, no one knows the pain that I go through every day just to get through it and then come home to...nothing. Ever since I can remember I've lived in foster homes jumping from home to home, never fitting in long enough to stay. My name is Eloise Marie Clark, or so I have been told, and this is the story of how my world changed when I found out who I really am...

On my sixteenth birthday mum and dad dropped a huge bombshell they told me I was being sent to deadwood academy. I'm a straight A student, I'm never in trouble, I babysit when asked, I work part time after school at a bookstore and now they want to pack me up and send me off to a boarding school six hours away. What have i done wrong to deserve this? don't they love me anymore? I honestly cant understand why they are doing this to me. I'm leaving all my friends and family behind and no matter how hard I protest my parents just say they don't want to speak about the matter. What kind of school uses the name deadwood anyway? Oh that's my new school in the middle of bloody nowhere. "It's ok violet calm down" I told myself as I walked out the door with my bags towards mum and dad waiting in the car.