Rizzoli-Isles – Book 4

Writing is lonely work, but no writer truly labors alone. I’m lucky to have had the help and support of Linda Marrow and Gina Centrello at Ballantine Books, Meg Ruley, Jane Berkey, Don Cleary and the superb team at the Jane Rotrosen Agency, Selina Walker at Transworld, and-most important of all-my husband Jacob. Warmest thanks to you all!

THAT BOY WAS WATCHING her again.

Fourteen-year-old Alice Rose tried to focus on the ten exam questions on her desk, but her mind was not on freshman English; it was on Elijah. She could feel the boy’s gaze, like a beam aimed at her face, could feel its heat on her cheek, and knew she was blushing.

Concentrate, Alice!

The next question on the test was smudged from the mimeograph machine, and she had to squint to make out the words.

Charles Dickens often chooses names that match his characters’ traits. Give some examples and describe why the names fit those particular characters.

Alice chewed her pencil, trying to dredge up an answer. But she couldn’t think while he was sitting at the next desk, so close that she could inhale his scent of pine soap and wood smoke. Manly smells. Dickens, Dickens, who cared about Charles Dickens and Nicholas Nickleby and boring freshman English when gorgeous Elijah Lank was looking at her? Oh my, he was so handsome, with his black hair and blue eyes. Tony Curtis eyes. The very first time she’d ever seen Elijah, that’s what she’d thought: that he looked exactly like Tony Curtis, whose beautiful face beamed from the pages of her favorite magazines, Modern Screen and Photoplay.