THE LONERS

Like a mash-up between "The Breakfast Club" and Lord of the Flies, the first book in this thrilling trilogy, DETENTION, tracks the first year after the explosion at McKinley High, as the school is quarantined, the gangs rise, and David makes his escape.

The Thorpe brothers are on their own. Ever since their mom died, and their dad started drinking, David's been forced to play parent to his epileptic younger brother, Will. He knows he's got to teach Will how to take care of himself sooner rather than later. But when an explosion rocks their high school one morning, David realizes he needs to teach Will real survival skills, if the two of them are going to make it out alive. With the explosion, a deadly virus is unleashed on the school. The virus only infects teenagers in their peak puberty years, causing them to lose their hair and making them lethal to adults and children. Within minutes, every faculty member is dead. The military quarantines the building, opening fire on any escape attempt and installing bi-weekly food drops. After a year of quarantine, with no adults around, all of the social cliques have developed into gangs The Nerds, The Geeks, The Freaks, The Skaters, The Burnouts, The Pretty Ones and Varsity and without a gang, it's almost impossible to survive. Things are looking up, until one day David finds the first hair growing back on his head a sure sign that he's leaving adolescence, and that he's about to become vulnerable to the virus. Now it's up to his motley crew to help him find a way out of the school before the virus kills him. In book two, EXPULSION, a violent attack leads to the heads of all the gangs being sent off to a juvenile detention center, where they must band together to make it out alive. And in book three, GRADUATION, the gang leaders are returned to McKinley, only to discover that a new batch of teachers, equipped with guns and haz-mat suits, has infiltrated the school with questionable motives and David is among their ranks. Lex Thomas is actually the collective pseudonym for two screenwriting partners, Lex Hrabe and Thomas Vhoories. Lex graduated from the University of Virginia and Thomas graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design. This is their first novel.