Wither

Rhine Ellery will be sixteen years old, giving her four years to live. This genetic time bomb is something she can credit contemporary science for. All men have a 25-year lifetime, whereas females only have a 20-year lifespan due to an attempt made in error to create the ideal race. Geneticists are searching for a miraculous remedy to revive humanity, while the population is overrun with impoverished orphans, crime and poverty rates have surged, and young girls are being abducted and sold into polygamous marriages in order to procreate.

Rhine promises to do all in her power to get away after being abducted and sold as a bride. Rhine can't force herself to detest her husband Linden as much as she would want to since he is utterly in love with her. He lets her into a world of richness and fantasy that she never would have imagined existed, and it nearly makes it easier to overlook the fact that her brief life is running out. But Rhine quickly learns that not everything in her new husband's strange world is what it seems. Her father-in-law, an eccentric doctor bent on finding the antidote, is hoarding corpses in the basement. Her fellow sister wives are to be trusted one day and feared the next, and Rhine is desperate to communicate to her twin brother that she is safe and alive. Is Rhine going to be able to get away before time runs out?

Shortly before turning seventeen, Rhine makes an effort to flee with Gabriel, one of Linden's slaves. But is there any chance for freedom in a society that is devolving into chaos?