"Vice & Voice"

Available in EPUB, MOBI, and PDF formats. Read on your Kindle, phone, tablet, computer and more

It’s the start of a new year that, from day one, is on course to shatter the stereotype of high school English teachers. Book-carrying? Reserved? Bespectacled? Buttoned-up and collared-down? Hair pulled back in a bun? Kassi Stanton alters that narrative. She's the English teacher you never had. After a year of butting heads with her boss and trying to save her school from Rikki Parks, Bantamville South High School’s self-promoting principal, Kassi Stanton retreats to her summer job supervising the teen staff at Wet Zone Water Park. She soaks in the sun and reflects on the past school year. The take-away? In the new year, she'll put her questionable behavior and conflicts with Parks behind her and stop rocking the boat. She won’t pledge loyalty, but she’ll keep on rowing. Then she steps through the doors of BS High in September, and the waves start crashing down on her. Parks adds a twist—gamification—to her unhealthy love affair with standardized testing. A new vice-principal is accused of sexual harassment. Students become victims of cyberbullying. Kassi hears a cr-a-a-a-cking as her be your best self idea starts to shatter. She’s spent a career analyzing the flaws and foibles of fictional literary characters. Now, face-to-face with the arc of her own character, she takes a lesson or two from classic heroines, gets on track to become one, and says me, too. When the problems come knocking at her classroom door, she turns to what she knows best and takes a lesson or two from a Shakespearean shrew. Will Rikki Parks play a role when the English teacher you never had gets in costume to take on the sleazy VP and the cyberbullying case?