When Cal Ware wins a scholarship to an elite New England boarding school, he's thrilled to leave his past behind. Back home in Mississippi, he was the poor queer kid who never fit in. But at Essex Academy, he'll be able to reinvent himself. Or so he hopes… But at Essex, Cal's classmates only see his cheap clothes and old iPhone. They mock his accent and can't believe he's never left the country or heard of The Hamptons. Cal, at his breaking point, is about to give up and return to Mississippi when he learns about a secret society on campus—the key to becoming Essex royalty.

Zay’s ma always said his mouth would get him in trouble. Sure enough, it got him into his first and only fight, junior year. Expelled from his district, Zay understands that his only hope for redemption is to transfer to Broadlawn Alternative School.

On the night Miles Abernathy—sixteen-year-old socialist and proud West Virginian—comes out as trans to his parents, he sneaks off to a party, carrying evidence that may finally turn the tide of the blood feud plaguing Twist Creek: Photos that prove the county’s Sheriff Davies was responsible for the so-called “accident” that injured his dad, killed others, and crushed their grassroots efforts to unseat him. The feud began a hundred years ago when Miles’s great-great-grandfather, Saint Abernathy, incited a miners’ rebellion that ended with a public execution at the hands of law enforcement.

Seventeen-year-old Gael is used to keeping to himself. Though his best friend convinces him to attend a meeting of Plus, a support group for LGBTQIA+ teens, Gael doesn’t plan on sharing much. Where would he even start? Between supporting his mother through her bouts of depression, dealing with his estranged father, and navigating senior year as a transgender boy at a conservative Tennessean high school, his life is a lot to unload on strangers. But after meeting easygoing Declan, Gael is welcomed into a new circle of friends who make him want to open up.

As each new decade begins, the Sun’s power must be replenished so that Sol can keep traveling along the sky and keep the chaotic Obsidian gods at bay. Sol selects ten of the most worthy semidioses to compete in the Sunbearer Trials. The winner carries light and life to all the temples of Reino del Sol, but the loser has the greatest honor of all—they will be sacrificed to Sol, their body melted down to refuel the Sun Stones, protecting the world for another ten years.