About the Book

Book: A Thousand Lies

Author: Kathy Cassel

Genre: YA

Release date: June 19, 2022

For talented teen photographer Bailey Collins, small-town life is good if predictable. Great friends. Loving if overly-protective parents. Academic and artistic success. An amazing new boyfriend.

Until a school field trip to a Chicago photography exhibit turns upside-down everything Bailey has believed about her life. Why are the baby pictures missing from her own past exhibited under another child’s name? Who is this elusive artist whose own identity appears as much a mystery as her exhibit? Or the hostile stranger bizarrely claiming to be Bailey’s birth father?

Above all, if everything about Bailey’s life is a lie, who are the people she has always called Mom and Dad? And if they can’t be trusted, how can she trust the loving God in whom they’ve taught her to place her faith? As a mountain of unraveling lies place both Bailey and those she cares about in danger, she sets out on a peril-filled quest to expose the truth. Will uncovering her true identity bring the closure and purpose Bailey seeks—or turn out to be the worst mistake of her life?

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About the Author

Kathy Cassel is author of more a dozen fiction and non-fiction titles for preteens and teens, including 2021 Selah Award finalist Freerunner and the iParenting award winner Christian Girls Guide series. Kathy has lived on three different continents with her USAF husband, has eight children, five adopted from Haiti and the United States, and six grandchildren. To better relate to her characters, she enjoys learning their skills such as whitewater rafting, scuba diving, and riding a motorcycle, but draws the line at sky diving.

More from Kathy

A book begins in my head long before the actual writing starts. For A Thousand Lies I had a vague idea in my mind of a girl discovering her parents weren’t her actual birth parents and setting out on a journey to find the truth.

I kicked the idea around in my mind for longer than I’d like to admit before writing A Thousand Lies. I chose three teens for main characters, Bailey, Reese, and Draya, and I chose NYC as the alternative setting because I fell in love with the city after my first visit there a few years ago.

After several drafts, I felt the story was a strong one and ready for publication. But as I lay watching my clock go around one night, a thought hit me. “What if the birthfather didn’t die in prison? What if he’s alive and free and comes after both Bailey and her birthmom?” And that started a rewrite that led to the completed YA novel A Thousand Lies.

I hope that my readers will find both the characters and the plot compelling as they join Bailey’s quest to find out her true identity.