Carine Montbertrand

Finally surgically transformed into a "pretty," sixteen-year-old Tally, now gorgeous and programmed to think only happy thoughts, is plagued by tangled memories of living in the Smoke, a rebel colony of "ugly" runaways hiding from the Special Circumstances authorities.

After being captured and surgically transformed into a "special," teenaged Tally Youngblood, now a government agent programmed to protect society from outside threats, is ordered to eliminate the rebel colony New Smoke, Tally's former home.

Paris, April 1999: Aimée Leduc has her work cut out for her—running her detective agency and fighting off sleep deprivation as she tries to be a good single mother to her new bébé. The last thing she has time for now is to take on a personal investigation for a poor manouche (Gypsy) boy. But he insists his dying mother has an important secret she needs to tell Aimée, something to do with Aimée's father's unsolved murder a decade ago. How can...

Through interviews and letters, tells the fictional story of two boys who hold their classmates hostage at a high school dance, and offers facts about guns and school violence throughout the story.