Teresa Richards Knihy

"Marina Berghman is a classical piano prodigy, with parents who've had her life mapped out since she was in diapers. But their plan leaves no room for her secret love of alternative rock, or Sean, the edgy guitarist who recently moved to town. When Marina buys a lottery ticket on her eighteenth birthday via the new Windfall app, she expects it to be nothing more than a rite of passage. But she wins--the grand prize of five thousand dollars a day for life. Suddenly given the means to break free from a life she never felt in control of, she's quick to cut her family ties and turn her back on everything she knows. But her lottery win was no lucky break. Her prize comes with strings attached, and Marina soon finds herself at the center of someone else's life or death game. When she discovers evidence linking her dad to the intrigue, she turns to Sean for help. But he's harboring secrets of his own. Now Marina must sort out who to trust and who's pulling the strings, before her prize turns into a noose."--Page 4 of cover

A princess, a pea, and a tower of mattresses. This is the sliver that survives of a story more nightmare than fairytale... Maggie Rhodes, high school junior and semi-reformed stalker, learns the tale's true roots after a spying attempt goes awry and her best friend Kate ends up as the victim of an ancient curse. At the center of the curse lies an enchanted emerald that has been residing quietly in a museum for the past fifty years. Admirers of the gem have no idea that it feeds on life. Or that it's found its next victim in Kate. Enter Lindy, a school acquaintance who knows more than she's letting on, and Garon, a handsome stranger claiming he knows how to help, and Maggie is left wondering who to trust and how to save her best friend before it's too late. If only Maggie knew her connection to the fairy tale was rooted far deeper than an endangered best friend.

Fairy tales are simply tales, told and re-told, but changed over time. It has been four months since Maggie learned the dark truth behind the tale of the Princess and the Pea and freed Princess Lindy from the cursed Emerald. Lindy is now back in the past where she belongs, queen of her tiny Scandinavian country, and Maggie is a fully reformed ex-stalker. Except … she can’t stop doing internet searches on Lindy and her country. One morning, Maggie wakes to find history turned on its head. Apparently, you can’t destroy a centuries-old curse without consequence. In order to prevent the changes in history from wiping out the present, Maggie resurrects her stalking gene and learns that fairy tales don’t stay dead for long. Or at all. Back in 1623, Lindy is juggling a threat to her family, a handsome new guard she’s not supposed to have feelings for, and a cursed Topaz with ties to the tale of Thumbelina. When past and present collide, Lindy and Maggie are brought together again, and another of Andersen’s tales turns from twisted fiction to chilling fact.