About Justice (Deck of Lies, #1)

A House of Cards…

When you build an entire life on a foundation of lies, it only takes one truth for the whole thing to come crashing down. I never invited the truth in. I never went searching for it. I never had any reason to suspect that the two people I loved most were dishonest with me every second of every day.

I made one bad decision, and in a single day my entire world changed. If I’m ever going to discover the truth about myself and my parents, I have to trace all the lies back to their source. I have to try to find the truth that they’re hiding.

The more I discover about myself, and my past, the more I realize that lies really are better than the truth. But now that I know the lies are all around me, I can’t stop until I’ve discovered them all. I’ll pull each lie away, one by one, and examine it to see what’s underneath…until this house of cards crumbles into dust at my feet.

I just hope I can survive the crash.





Excerpt from Justice:

“Excuse me,” I stretched up on my tiptoes to peer around the main counter, hoping that perhaps someone was bent down getting something from one of the shelves underneath. While I had my nose practically squished against the computer, the smiling librarian who’d helped me earlier had disappeared. I was left staring at a vacant space behind the counter. “Excuse me!” I craned my head in all directions, looking between shelves to see if perhaps she’d slipped off to file away some loose books.

“You don’t have to shout. I’m right here.” But it wasn’t the voice I expected.

I spun around, coming face to face with the most intense pair of eyes I’ve ever seen. The steady, cobalt gaze was so firmly fixed on my face I couldn’t even blink. The dark eyes were shadowed by the low-hanging, thick black eyebrows above them, a perfect match for the longish black hair framing the pale face across from mine. “What are you doing here?” I demanded immediately, surprised by his presence.

River Scott smirked at me, lifting one corner of his mouth. “I work here. How may I help you?”

“You work here?” I blinked. “But I saw you just two days ago…” I snapped my teeth together so quickly, I could actually hear them clicking together. I couldn’t believe what I was just about to say. But I saw you just two days ago at the mental hospital.

One of those black eyebrows quirked upward at me, a hairy question mark. “Volunteering to work for free at the library is a service to the community.”

When I merely stared at him, he shrugged and explained further, “Court-ordered community service. And I was released from the ward yesterday.”

“I see. So, um, can you help me, then? I found something in the newspaper archives I want to print out.”
“Sure,” he kept his gaze on me as he moved around the counter, joining me on the other side. He walked straight to the terminal I’d been using and bent over the keyboard. “Just the front page?”

“Yeah, that’ll be fine.”

He pushed some buttons, and from the recesses of the huge room I heard a printer roar to life.

“It’ll take a few minutes. They still use dot matrix,” he told me, leaning back against the desk. Every time his eyes met mine, I had an almost irresistible urge to gulp. I was right about River Scott, after all. Standing this close to him, I could feel the rage inside him even more strongly than I did before. He was practically seething with it. We simply stared at each other silently, and I wondered if he was as curious about me as I was about him.

Definitely not, I concluded a moment later. After looking at me steadily with that half-smirk on his lips, he straightened and sauntered away. I forced myself not to watch him go, just in case he happened to look back.


Justice, and book 2: The Tower, can be found on most online book retailers - for Kindle they are each only $0.99 right now!


About the Author:

Jade Varden is a teller of tales from Louisville, Kentucky.  After she completes the Deck of Lies series, she will start working on a new book series and several stand-alone novels that will be released in 2013.

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