The Secret of Charley Grace, by Colin Kersey

Fourteen-year-old Charley Grace was raised in secrecy—trained in martial arts, fluent in Mandarin, and never told who she really was. When assassins storm her villa in Mexico, and her aunt dies defending her, Charley must flee with only a clue: she is “Alpha Girl.”

What she doesn’t yet know is that she is the first human genetically edited to be immune to disease and destined for an extraordinary lifespan. But she is also a target.

Those desiring unimaginable profits seek her biotechnology secrets for themselves: Chinese intelligence, Russian agents, the Sinaloa Cartel, big pharma, rogue billionaires,and even factions within the U.S. government. Her only ally is Ray Nelson, an emotionally-scarred truck driver on the run from his wife’s killers with his dog, Patsy. As they flee across the Arizona desert to the Las Vegas Strip and beyond, they enlist an intrepid band of outcasts who become Charley’s shield—and her family.

Building upon the success of Colin Kersey’s previous award-winning novel, Swimming with the Angels, The Secret of Charley Grace is a relentless page-turning thriller about greed, redemption, and a girl the world sees as a lab specimen—but who refuses to be anything less than fully human.