J T Ellison - Good Girls Lie

Goode girls dont lie...

Perched atop a hill in the tiny town of Marchburg, Virginia, The Goode School is a prestigious prep school known as a Silent Ivy. The boarding school of choice for daughters of the rich and influential, it accepts only the best and the brightest. Its elite status, long-held traditions and honor code are ideal for preparing exceptional young women for brilliant futures at Ivy League universities and beyond. But a stranger has come to Goode, and this ivy has turned poisonous.

In a world where appearances are everything, as long as students pretend to follow the rules, no one questions the cruelties of the secret societies or the dubious behavior of the privileged young women who expect to get away with murder. But when a popular student is found dead, the truth cannot be ignored. Rumors suggest she was struggling with a secret that drove her to suicide.

But look closely...because there are truths and there are lies, and then there is everything that really happened.

J.T. ELLISONs pulse-pounding new novel examines the tenuous bonds of friendship, the power of lies and the desperate lengths people will go to to protect their secrets.

Praise for the novels of J.T. Ellison

Outstanding Ellison is at the top of her game.

Publishers Weekly (starred review) on Tear Me Apart

A compelling story with a moving message.

Booklist on Tear Me Apart

Well-paced and creative An inventive thriller with a horrifying reveal and a happy ending.

Kirkus Reviews on Tear Me Apart

Exceptional Ellisons best work to date.

Publishers Weekly (starred review) on Lie to Me

Comparisons to Gone Girl due to the initial story structure are expected, but Ellison has crafted a much better story that will still echo long after the final page is turned.

Associated Press on Lie to Me

Immensely readablelush.

Booklist on Lie to Me

Fans of Paula Hawkins, A.S.A. Harrison, Mary Kubica, and Karin Slaughter will want to add this to their reading list.

Library Journal on Lie to Me

The domestic noir subgenre focuses on the truly horrible things people sometimes do to those they love, and J.T. Ellisons latest, Lie to Me , is one of the bestan absolute must-read.

Mystery Scene Magazine

Wonderful A one-more-chapter, dont-eat-dinner, stay-up-late sensation.

Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author, on Lie to Me

Also by New York Times bestselling author J.T. Ellison

TEAR ME APART

LIE TO ME

FIELD OF GRAVES

WHAT LIES BEHIND

WHEN SHADOWS FALL

EDGE OF BLACK

A DEEPER DARKNESS

WHERE ALL THE DEAD LIE

SO CLOSE THE HAND OF DEATH

THE IMMORTALS

THE COLD ROOM

JUDAS KISS

ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS

Look for J.T. Ellisons next novel
available soon from MIRA Books.

J.T Ellison

Good Girls Lie

For all the girls out there seeking to better themselves through education,
I salute you!

Vita Abundantior.

And, as always, for Randy.

J.T. Ellison is an award-winning New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author with thrillers published in twenty-seven countries and fifteen languages. She is also the Emmy Awardwinning cohost of A Word on Words, a literary interview television show. She lives in Nashville with her husband and two small gray minions, known as cats in some cultures. Visit www.jtellison.com or @thrillerchick for more.

Contents

And now Im going to tell you about a scorpion. This scorpion wanted to cross a river, so he asked the frog to carry him. No, said the frog, no thank you. If I let you on my back, you may sting me and the sting of the scorpion is death. Now, where, asked the scorpion, is the logic in that? For scorpions always try to be logical. If I sting you, you will die. I will drown. So the frog was convinced and allowed the scorpion on his back. But just in the middle of the river, he felt a terrible pain and realized that, after all, the scorpion had stung him. Logic! cried the dying frog as he started under, bearing the scorpion down with him. There is no logic in this! I know, said the scorpion, but I cant help itits my character.

Orson Welles, Mr. Arkadin

THE HANGING

The girls body dangles from the tall iron gates guarding the schools entrance. A closer examination shows the ends of a red silk tie peeking out like a cardinal on a winter branch, forcing her neck into a brutal angle. She wears her graduation robe and multicolored stole as if knowing shell never see the achievement. It rained overnight and the thin robe clings to her body, dew sparkling on the edges. The last tendrils of dawns fog laze about her legs, which are five feet from the ground.

There is no breeze, no birds singing or squirrels industriously gathering for the long winter ahead, no cars passing along the street, only the cool, misty morning air and the gentle metallic creaking of the gates under the weight of the dead girl. She is suspended in midair, her back to the street, her face hidden behind a curtain of dirty, wet hair, dark from the rains.

Because of the damage to her face, it will take them some time to officially identify her. In the beginning, it isnt even clear she attends the school, despite wearing The Goode School robes.

But she does.

The fingerprints will prove it.

Of course, there are a few people who know exactly who is hanging from the schools gates. Know who, and know why.

But they will never tell.

As word spreads of the apparent suicide, The Goode Schools all-female student body begin to gather, paying silent, terrified homage to their fallen compatriot. The gates are closed and lockedas they always are overnightbuttressed on either side by an ivy-covered, ten-foot-high, redbrick wall, but it tapers off into a knee-wall near the back entrance to the school parking lot, and so is escapable by foot. The girls of Goode silently filter out from the dorms, around the end of Old West Hall and Old East Hall to Front Streetthe main street of Marchburg, the small Virginia town housing the elite prep schooland take up their positions in front of the gate in a wedge of crying, scared, worried young women who glance over shoulders looking for the one who is missing from their ranks. To reassure themselves this isnt their friend, their sister, their roommate.

Another girl joins them, but no one notices she comes from the opposite direction, from town. She was not behind the redbrick wall.

Whispers rise from the small crowd, nothing loud enough to be overheard but forming a single question.

Who is it? Who?

A solitary siren pierces the morning air, the sound bleeding upward from the bottom of the hill, a rising crescendo. Someone has called the sheriff.

Goode perches like a gargoyle above the citys small downtown, huddles behind its ivy-covered brick wall. The campus is flanked by two blocks of restaurants, bars, and necessary shops. The schools buildings are tied together with trolleysenclosed glass-and-wood bridges that make it easy for the girls to move from building to building in climate-controlled comfort. It is quiet, dignified, isolated. As are the girls who attend the school; serious, studious. Good. Goode girls are always good. They go on to great things.

The headmistress, or dean, as she prefers to call herself, Ford Julianne Westhaven, great-granddaughter several times removed from the founder of The Goode School, arrives in a flurry, her driver, Rumi, braking the family Bentley with a screech one hundred feet away from the gates. The crowd in the street blocks the car and, for a moment, the sight of the dangling girl. No one stops to think about why the dean might be off campus this early in the morning. Not yet, anyway.