Laura’s Marked is out in paperback

Laura can be a bit shy about promoting her own work — it’s so much easier to cheer for other writers. But we’ve nudged her to step up and mention that her novel Marked is now out in paperback. 

For those who don’t know already, in Marked, sixteen-year-old Lyla lives in a bleak, controlling society where only the brightest and most favored students succeed. When she is caught buying cheats in an underground shadow market, she is tattooed—marked—as a criminal. Then she is offered redemption and she jumps at the chance . . . but it comes at a cost. Doing what is right means betraying the boy she has come to love, and, perhaps, losing even more than she thought possible. Graphic novel–style vignettes revealing the history of this world provide Lyla with guidance and clues to a possible way out of the double bind she finds herself in.

Sally Cantirino illustrated the graphic novel-style vignettes, which are incredibly cool. I wrote about creating the mixed-media piece of the novel for Adventures in YA Publishing.

Kirkus said of Marked that: “McCaffrey’s society has a Dickensian feel to it, with a heaving, discontented underclass dominated by the barons who control the source of power and the inventors who wield it. An original, textured page-turner.”

I’m thrilled and honored that it also received praise from SLJ, Booklist, VOYA, Bulletin for the Center of Children’s Books, and ALAN Picks, which you can read about on my website.

Like all of you, I have a lot of projects on my desk, but whenever there’s something to celebrate, I do. Thanks for all the love and support, here on YARN and elsewhere in the YA literary world.