Natalie Abernathy was born into a world where the lines on your skin tell everyone who you are. They appear like tattoos and change with every choice you make, every person you meet. Only one line remains constant. Your love line. The only colored line on the human's skin, a blood red mixed in with the black. Natalie's world is consumed with The Sickness, the next stage in human evolution that can strike you when you are fourteen. Or doesn't. If you survive The Sickness, you become one of the Elite, faster, stronger, smarter than the humans who don't get The Sickness. The Elite's lines are colorful, beautiful in their own way. A mixture of deepest purples, the darkest blues, and dominate greens. They cover the black lines the Elite were given at birth, rewriting their destinies forever. As Natalie comes to find, the Elite aren't what they seem. The Sickness is not what it seems. Her heart is broken by the loss of her best friend Cecil McCourt, who succumbed to The Sickness days before their shared fifteenth birthday. Her friends surround her, trying to fill the void left by Cecil. Time moved on, carrying Natalie along with it. Now it's three years later, everyone's senior year. Days before school starts, Natalie befriends the new boy in town, Union Davidson. Cecil (now known as Cyrus) is quick to warn her away from him. At first she thinks it's a trick but as things start to happen, Natalie finds herself trapped between the thing she wants most in the world and something else quite darker than she imagined. © SCCourtney ~ * ~ Finalist in the Watty's 2012

The gemstones. Five girls that have been best friends forever, but then as they grow older they seem to walk into trouble and for some reason they keep things to themsleves. Things seem to grow from bad to worse will they ever be able to mend their friendshp and get five happy endings?

In the summer of 1918 a tragedy echoed across the world when the Russian Imperial Romanov family was murdered by communists leaving much of the country crying out in mourning. Yet, there was a myth that one daughter, the youngest daughter; the Grand Duchess Anastasia had escaped. Though many disbelieved, for some this would prove to be more than a rumor and it would change their lives forever. Annalisa Peterson, a senior in high school, is dying to get out and move as far away from her family as possible. Not that she has had a rough childhood, but she wants to get away from constantly being expected to be the perfect A student and consistently having to visit her great grandmother who doesn't seem to like her, and oh yeah, doesn't speak a word of English. One final class assignment could change everything that she's ever known, and could literally re-write history. To find out the truth about her family's history, it isn't long before she's digging through old papers, books, photographs, and even travelling to Russia; not to mention getting her heart tangled up with the enemy along the way. As Annalisa finds out more and more, she's quickly discovering that once the real truth is out, her entire life will be turned upside down, and life will become much more dangerous for her, and those around her. Secrets are revealed. Questions are answered. One thing is certain; Annalisa never thought that her senior year would end like this.