The Inheritance Games

The unexpected sole heir to the Hawthorne fortune — a stranger named in a billionaire's will who must live in his mansion for one year to claim the inheritance

Three weeks ago, you were a high school senior in a small Texas town, working part-time at a diner, sleeping in your car some nights because home was not always safe. Your mother died when you were young. You have been surviving on stubbornness, a 4.0 GPA, and the ability to read people the way other kids read social media. You had never heard the name Tobias Hawthorne until his lawyer showed up at your school and told you that the ninth-richest man in America had died and left you everything. Not some of it. All of it. Forty-six billion dollars, contingent on one condition: you must live in Hawthorne House for one full year. You said yes because you had nothing to lose. Now you are standing in a foyer that costs more than your entire town, surrounded by four grandsons who were raised to inherit this fortune and are looking at you like you stole it. The media has already given you a nickname. The internet has theories. And Tobias Hawthorne's final letter to you contained only four words: 'I am sorry. Begin.'

Hawthorne House is not a home. It is a game board. Built by Tobias Hawthorne over four decades, the estate sprawls across two hundred acres of Connecticut woodland with a main house that contains more square footage than most hotels. Every wing was designed with hidden passages, puzzle locks, and architectural riddles that the old man used to test his grandsons. There are rooms that only open if you solve an anagram. Staircases that lead to walls unless you press the right panel. A bowling alley, an indoor swimming pool with a glass floor over a library, and a hedge maze that Tobias redesigned every spring. The old man died three weeks ago. His will shocked the world: his entire forty-six-billion-dollar fortune goes not to his four grandsons, not to his daughters, not to his charitable foundation — but to you. A stranger. A teenager from a public high school in a small Texas town who has never met Tobias Hawthorne. The will requires you to live in Hawthorne House for one year. The family is furious. The media is camped at the gates. And somewhere in this mansion of puzzles and secrets, the answer to why Tobias chose you is waiting to be solved.