School for Psychics: Book One

In this earnest, naive paranormal thriller, a group of psychics in training slowly learn that misdirection can be as dangerous as mind control. Teddy Cannon, unsuccessful card shark, is recruited to study at a secretive foundation’s academy intended to prepare people with mental gifts for careers in security and law enforcement. It’s hard to believe that Teddy and her fellow young adults—some of whom have done police work or had run-ins with the law—would so blithely sign up for a militaristic training program without some skepticism about its motives. After a series of mysterious thefts and disappearances at the academy and a sabotaged obstacle course Teddy barely survives, she decides she wants answers. She convinces some of her fellow students to break into an FBI facility to uncover just who is out to get them, egged on by a jailed psychic connected to Teddy’s birth parents. The book has the brio of a first novel, with sudden swings of emotion and outrage that would do a hormonal teenager proud. The pages turn at a rapid pace, but it takes a bit longer than necessary for a veteran poker player to realize that, if she can’t spot the sucker at the table, it’s her. Agent: Molly Atlas, ICM. (Apr.)