Unhinged and Loud

From the back cover

By everyone's account, Chloe was the perfect good girl: sweet, obedient, never talking back. Only inside her head did the real show run, and after college and a first year in the corporate grind, that inner voice curdled into pure resentment. Heading home for the holidays, exhausted and radiating bitterness, she discovers the awful truth: the people around her can hear every thought.

On the train, a burly stranger snaps at her silent pop anthem, a mother defends her seat-kicking child, and Chloe answers with a dead-eyed smile and a mental menu of tender drumsticks and middle-aged meat. The pair flee down the aisle calling her a psycho, and the stranger types a frantic plea not to be eaten. A cab driver takes the scenic route until her bluff and her thoughts scare him straight.

At the family gathering, her oldest aunt, Karen, calls the cats filthy beasts and jokes about the stew pot, while second aunt Susan lectures that a woman's education is wasted. Chloe keeps her smile and her thoughts sharp, and her parents whisper only one reminder: keep it in check.