Maggie Adams Weaver
Maggie Adams Weaver was born in Presteigne, a half-timbered market town folded into the Welsh Marches where the River Lugg quietly decides which stones are Wales and which are England. She grew up close enough to the line to stand on the bridge with one foot in each country — which may account for a lifelong soft spot for characters who don't quite belong on either side of a wall. It is a town of 1616 datestones and prim Georgian faces with older, timber-framed bones hidden behind them; of a thirteenth-century church that keeps a Flemish tapestry in the shadows; of a Judge's Lodging that was courthouse and gaol by turns.
A girl raised among buildings that are respectable out front and secretive underneath was always going to end up writing about places like the Willow Forge Academy.
She has never really left the border country, or the pleasures it's good for: long walks up into the unspoilt hills, a pint in a pub older than the United States, and the particular contentment of a market town that has never once been in a hurry.
Born an Adams, she became a Weaver by marrying Thomas, and the two names have kept each other company on the spine of her books ever since. She and Thomas raised three children who have since scattered — one of them only as far as the English bank of the Lugg.
She writes by lamplight, keeps unfashionable hours, and has gone silver without the slightest apology.
The willow forge academy for girls
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The perfect school for a girl like her. That's the problem.
Sloane Harper-Grey is brilliant, impossible, and out of second chances.
After a fourth expulsion, her father ships her off to Willow Forge — a jewel of a boarding school tucked into the fog and ridgelines of western North Carolina, all leaded glass, old money, and Excellence Since
The perfect school for a girl like her. That's the problem.
Sloane Harper-Grey is brilliant, impossible, and out of second chances.
After a fourth expulsion, her father ships her off to Willow Forge — a jewel of a boarding school tucked into the fog and ridgelines of western North Carolina, all leaded glass, old money, and Excellence Since 1857 carved above the door. It's meant to fix her.
Sloane intends to burn through it like she's burned through everywhere else.
Her defiance earns her exactly the wrong reward: she's relegated to a shuttered corner of campus — locked doors, old bones, something underneath that the school has spent a long time keeping quiet.
But Sloane has never been any good at sitting still. And the things she starts finding don't add up.
Beneath the brochure about refinement and legacy, Willow Forge was built for a very particular purpose. The school's polished story is hiding an older, uglier one — one Sloane is starting to realize was never fully retired.
And the more threads she pulls, the clearer it becomes that she is exactly the kind of girl it was designed for.