Lauren DeStefano

The Chemical Garden Trilogy
Wither
2011

By age sixteen, Rhine Ellery has four years left to live. She can thank modern science for this genetic time bomb. A botched effort to create a perfect race has left all males with a lifespan of 25 years, and females with a lifespan of 20 years. Geneticists are seeking a miracle antidote to restore the human race, desperate orphans crowd the population, crime and poverty have skyrocketed, and young girls are being kidnapped and sold as polygamous brides to bear more children.

When Rhine is kidnapped and sold as a bride, she vows to do all she can to escape. Her husband, Linden, is hopelessly in love with her, and Rhine can’t bring herself to hate him as much as she’d like to. He opens her to a magical world of wealth and illusion she never thought existed, and it almost makes it possible to ignore the clock ticking away her short life. But Rhine quickly learns that not everything in her new husband’s strange world is what it seems. Her father-in-law, an eccentric doctor bent on finding the antidote, is hoarding corpses in the basement. Her fellow sister wives are to be trusted one day and feared the next, and Rhine is desperate to communicate to her twin brother that she is safe and alive. Will Rhine be able to escape–before her time runs out?

Fever
2012

Rhine and Gabriel have escaped the mansion, but they’re still in danger. Outside, they find a world even more disquieting than the one they left behind. Determined to get to Manhattan and to find Rhine’s twin brother Rowan, the two press forward amidst threats of being captured again . . . or worse.
The road they are on is long and perilous-and in a world where young women only live to age 20 and men die at age 25, time is precious. In this sequel, Rhine must decide if freedom is worth the price-now that she has more to lose than ever.

Lauren DeStefano nasceu em New Haven no Connecticut e escreve desde muito nova.

É a autora desta Trilogia, The Chemical Garden, para jovens adultos. Wither foi publicado em 2011, seguido de Fever em 2012 e o último, Sever, será publicado em 2013.