Read on for a sneak preview from Kiki Sullivan’s sultry, seductive and irresistible novel, The Dolls.

Catch all six FREE episodes from the first four chapters of The Dolls before the complete book comes out on 1st March 2015. Don’t miss a single one!

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Previously on The Dolls

Seventeen-year-old Eveny Cheval is plucked from her Brooklyn apartment and driven over a thousand miles south to Carrefour, Louisiana – the town where she was born…and where her mum committed suicide. But behind the town’s imposing gates, long-buried secrets simmer, leaving Eveny with questions she can’t answer… What has brought back the long-buried memories of her mother’s funeral? And who is the hot guy with caramel-coloured skin in the cemetery?

Episode Two

I’m still standing outside the passenger door of the car, staring up at my house – my mansion – when I feel a warm hand on my arm. Startled, I spin around and see an old man peering at me.

“Eveny,” he says in a low, rumbly voice. His dark brown skin is a sharp contrast to his snow-white hair. He must be at least seventy-five, but his wide grey eyes are startlingly clear.

“Where did you come from?” I ask, my heart still pounding.

He beams at me. “From the garden. I didn’t mean to scare you, dear. Do you remember me? I’m Boniface. Boniface Baptiste.”

“Boniface? Geez, of course,” I say. He was the house’s caretaker when I was little. He was around all the time,

and he even used to babysit me sometimes when my mother and Aunt Bea ran errands together. “You still work here?”

“I live just out back in the caretaker’s cottage. I’ve been looking after the Cheval mansion for practically as long as I can remember. Come on,” he says, gently placing a hand on my back and leading me towards the house. “Let me show you around.”

Aunt Bea has already vanished somewhere, so it’s just me as Boniface talks slowly about how he took the sheets off the furniture, shook the dust out of the curtains, and scrubbed the beautiful hardwood floors before we arrived.

“I miss your mama all the time,” he says abruptly as we come to the front door. “You’re the spitting image of her, you know. Same red hair, same green eyes, same lovely smile.”

He opens the huge black front door for me, and I feel a pang the moment I step over the threshold. I stand frozen in the front hallway as I’m hit with a barrage of hazy memories. But it’s not until I look to my right and see a set of closed double doors painted a sombre red that I feel the breath knocked out of me. “That’s the parlour,” I say softly.

“You remember it?”“I don’t know…” I’m confused. I don’t recall ever being

inside the room, but something about it lurks in a far corner of my mind. Suddenly, my heart is racing and my

lungs are constricting. I reach for the big bronze door handle, but Boniface steps in front of me.

“It’s locked, I’m afraid. Haven’t seen the key in years.” He’s already walking away by the time I can breathe again.

“What is it with this town and keys?” I mutter.“Just wait until you see your bedroom,” Boniface calls

over his shoulder. “I took the liberty of decorating a bit. I wanted you to feel at home here,” he’s saying as I catch up to him on the wide wooden stairway.

Upstairs, Boniface pushes open the door at the end of the hall and motions for me to step inside. The bedroom, which last held my little twin bed and the big armchair where my mother read me stories at night, has been transformed.

The walls have been painted sky blue – my favourite colour – and are lined with colourful photos of flowers. There are framed shots of lilies in a field, lavender in a garden, sunflowers in a white pitcher on a farm table, and cornflowers in a vase. Pushed up against the right wall is a teak sleigh bed with a fluffy white comforter. Above it, a beautiful wreath of dried poppies and peonies hangs from the wall. To my left is a huge picture window framed by gauzy white curtains.

“It’s perfect,” I breathe. In fact, it’s nearly as large as our entire apartment in Brooklyn.

“Your aunt called and told me all about your interest in

botany.” Boniface is smiling at me. “Well I’ll let you get settled, then.”

As he leaves, I feel myself beginning to warm to the place. But then I make the mistake of wandering towards the window, which is arched and beautiful and diffuses the rays of soft morning light. I’d forgotten that it overlooks the cemetery we passed earlier, and as I gaze out now at the sprawling, fog-shrouded field of ornate crypts, I feel a chill go through me. Even when I back away and try to focus again on my great room, my veins feel like they’re filled with ice.

I’m sitting on the deck just after sunset, trying to figure out how it’s seventy degrees here in the dead of winter, when my phone rings.

It’s Meredith, who launches into an off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday” as soon as I say hello. “So how’s Nowheresville, Louisiana?” she asks when she’s done assaulting my eardrums.

“Well, it’s not New York. And this whole town is surrounded by a big wall, so it’s like we’re completely trapped.” I feel a million miles away from my best friend as I hear laughter and honking horns in the background. The sounds of the city sure beat the silence out here in the middle of nowhere. Aunt Bea and Boniface have gone into

town to pick up some things for the new bakery, and I feel like I’m the only person left on earth. I absent-mindedly flick on and off the flashlight I’d grabbed from inside, watching the deck alternately illuminate and plunge into darkness.

“You won’t believe how crazy the wedding was today without you,” Meredith says.

“The Michaelsons?” I ask, trying not to sound as sad as I feel. “Or the Harrises?” For the last year and a half, Mer and I have worked for Blossom and Bloom, a florist in our neighbourhood. The owner, Pauline, always said I had a sixth sense about which flowers fitted which brides. Working for her is one of the things I’ll miss most.

“The Michaelsons,” Meredith replies. “It was just me and Pauline because David called in sick. We ran out of lisianthus and had to figure out what to sub in.”

“What’d you use? Texas bluebonnets?” I lived for those emergencies, the ones where you ran out of the blooms you were intending to use, so you had to find something else, something that fitted both the bride’s vision and your own sense of the couple.

“We only had purple statice.”“I’m sure that worked great,” I lie. Purple statice is a

filler, so the substitution would have changed the whole feel of the bouquets. I’m so dorky – I’m the only person in the world who would care about something like that.

“Anyway, what did you say about there being a wall around the town?” Meredith asks, and I’m relieved for the change of subject because it momentarily stops me from thinking about the life I left behind.

I quickly recap what Aunt Bea told me about the gate. Then I tell her about the weather, the cemetery just beyond the garden wall, and the strange, swirling mist.

“No offence,” Meredith says when I’m done, “but Carrefour sounds crazypants.”

I’m surprised to realize I feel a bit defensive. “It’s not so bad.”

“Whatever you say. Anyways, what’re you doing for your birthday?”

“Nothing yet.” In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if Aunt Bea has even remembered, because it’s just after eight p.m., and she hasn’t wished me a happy birthday. No cake. No ice cream. No singing. Nothing.

“Maybe Bea’s planning to surprise you.”“Maybe.” I turn the flashlight off and tap it absently

against my knee.I’m about to tell Meredith about the intimidating-

looking Pointe Laveau Academy when something darts across the backyard. I blink into the darkness and sit up, my heart pounding. Meredith launches into a story about how Jon Dashiell hit on Holly Henderson right in front of her boyfriend, but I’m not listening. “Shhhh,” I finally manage.

“Did you just shush me?”“I think I heard a noise,” I whisper. “There’s definitely

something in my backyard.”“Kind of like how you always thought you saw some

guy lurking in the shadows here in Brooklyn?” she asks, laughing.

“No,” I mutter, feeling stupid. Three months ago, I’d begun to notice a slender man with white-blond hair loitering behind me wherever I went. I’d be walking home from school, and I’d catch a glimpse of him in the shadows, or I’d be window-shopping in SoHo with Meredith and see his reflection in a glass storefront. When I finally told Meredith about it, she’d laughed for a full minute. Like she’s doing now.

But I tune her out as I strain to see across the darkness. The moon is half full, so it’s casting light over my mother’s rose garden, which Boniface has so carefully maintained. Beyond that lies her vegetable garden, lush with greens, tomatoes, and herbs. It backs up against the cemetery wall edging our property. That’s where I see a shadow slinking along now.

I squint, then draw in a sharp breath as I realize it’s human-shaped. I blink a few times and can just make out the faint silhouette of a person methodically picking something from one of the plants near the wall.

“Hey!” I drop my phone and call out. “Hey you! Stop!”

I’m dashing across the backyard in defence of my mom’s beloved garden before I realize how stupid I’m being. How do I know it’s not some creepy guy waiting to rob our house – or worse?

Bring The Dolls to life!

Listen to the author’s playlist inspired by the book at www.thedollsbooks.co.uk

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Get The Dolls – Episode 3 for free from www.usborne.com/the-dolls

on Sunday 8th February 2015

Episode 1 - 1st February 2015Episode 2 - 4th February 2015Episode 3 - 8th February 2015Episode 4 - 11th February 2015Episode 5 - 15th February 2015Episode 6 - 17th February 2015

Out 1st March 2015

Peregrine Marceau and Chloe St. Pierre are

BOYS WANT THEM

Impossibly beautiful and dangerously powerful, they hold the town of Carrefour under their spell.

GIRLS WANT TO BE THEM

Yet newcomer Eveny Cheval is not so easily swayed by their glamour – until she discovers she is a Doll too.

SOMEONE WANTS THEM DEAD

And when a killer sneaks past the locked gates of Carrefour, only the Dolls’ combined powers can stop

the murderer in their midst.

Sultry, seductive, irresistible...welcome to Carrefour.

www.thedollsbooks.co.uk

First published in the UK in 2015 by Usborne Publishing Ltd., Usborne House, 83-85 Saffron Hill, London EC1N 8RT, England. www.usborne.com

Text © Kiki Sullivan and The Story Foundation 2014

First published in the US by Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, New York 10007.

The right of Kiki Sullivan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

Illustrations © Usborne Publishing 2015

Author photograph by Melixa Carbonell

The name Usborne and the devices are Trade Marks of Usborne Publishing Ltd.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual

events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.