When Ruby woke up on her tenth birthday, something about her had changed. Something alarming enough to make her parents lock her in the garage and call the police. Something that got her sent to Thurmond, a brutal government "rehabilitation camp." She might have survived the mysterious disease that killed most of America's children, but she and the others emerged with something far worse: frightening abilities they cannot control. Now sixteen, Ruby...

Ruby never asked for the abilities that almost cost her her life. Now she must call upon them on a daily basis, leading dangerous missions to bring down a corrupt government and breaking into the minds of her enemies. Other kids in the Children''s League call Ruby "Leader", but she knows what she really is: a monster. When Ruby is entrusted with an explosive secret, she must embark on her most dangerous mission yet: leaving the Children''s League...

In this collection of stories set in the world of the best-selling Darkest Minds trilogy, a desperate young man is forced to make a terrible choice; a spark of light brightens a brutal world when a girl named Sam encounters her childhood best friend at the government-run "rehabilitation" camp; and, even though Sam is thrown into a terrifying and uncertain new life, her survival at stake, the time has come to fulfill a promise she made.

Accused of committing a horrifying act, Suzume "Zu" Kimura goes on the run, forming an uncomfortable alliance with two mysterious Psi who she's not sure she can trust in order to clear her name and expose the evils underlying the country's recovery.

"In the second installment of The Darkest Minds trilogy, Ruby joins forces with the revolutionary Children's League to find critical information about the epidemic that has torn both her life and America apart"--

An intimate memoir on Tan's life as a writer that explores formative experiences from her childhood and her evolving perspectives on the symbiotic relationship between fiction and emotional memory.