Divorced Azra and Beck are forced to deal with the emotional fallout when the admission process causes friction between their twin sons. Queen bee Samantha Zeller and her moneyman husband, Kevin, are not above lying about the IQ test results of their daughter, Emma Z. Rose Holland, a pediatric neurologist, uses her position to gather inside information that could be vital for her daughter, Emma Q’s, admission. With limited spaces available, the competition among parents to get their offspring into the school, called the “Stuyvesant of the Rockies,” turns ruthless. It's a humorous, keenly observed, timely take on ambitious parents, willful kids, and the pursuit of prestige, no matter the cost.In this sharply entertaining novel from Holsinger ( The Invention of Fire), Crystal, Colo., is an affluent community where a new gifted magnet school for grades six through 12 will soon open. Seen through the lens of four families who've been a part of one another's lives since their kids were born over a decade ago, the story reveals not only the lengths that some adults are willing to go to get ahead, but the effect on the group's children, sibling relationships, marriages, and careers, as simmering resentments come to a boil and long-buried, explosive secrets surface and detonate. Set in the fictional town of Crystal, Colorado, The Gifted School is a keenly entertaining novel that observes the drama within a community of friends and parents as good intentions and high ambitions collide in a pile-up with long-held secrets and lies. This deliciously sharp novel captures the relentless ambitions and fears that animate parents and their children in modern America, exploring the conflicts between achievement and potential, talent and privilege. Smart and juicy, a compulsively readable novel about a previously happy group of friends and parents that is nearly destroyed by their own competitiveness when an exclusive school for gifted children opens in the community, from the author of The Displacements Courtney Sullivan, author of Friends and Strangers, in The New York Times

a suspenseful, laugh-out-loud page-turner and an incisive inspection of privilege, race and class.' –J. The Gifted School is the juiciest novel I've read in ages.

The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger