Self-help guru Julia James is so good at being single that she's become famous for it-advising women that they don't need a man to be happy. Then the unthinkable happens. Just when her newest book, 101 Ways to Cheat at Solitaire, is about to hit stores, a trumped-up piece of gossip linking her to a gorgeous actor hits the papers. Their pictures are splashed all over the tabloids, and now Julia's credibility is about to hit rock bottom. But she isn't going down without a fight. Unless, that is, the actor is going down with her.

The Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women is a fairly typical all-girls school – that is, if every school teaches advanced martial arts in PE, chemistry always consists of the latest in chemical warfare, and everyone breaks CIA codes for extra credit in computer class. So in truth, Gallagher Academy might position itself as a school for geniuses but what they really mean is spies. But what happens when a Gallagher girl falls for a boy who doesn't have a code name? Cammie Morgan may be fluent in fourteen languages and capable of killing a man in seven different ways (three of which involve a piece of uncooked spaghetti), but the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women hasn't prepared her for what to do when she meets an ordinary boy who thinks she's an ordinary girl. Sure, she can tap his phone, hack into his computer, and track him through a mall without him ever being the wiser, but can she have a regular relationship with a regular boy who can never know the truth about her school (it's really not a last resort place for snooty heiresses with nowhere else to go), her family (her mother is a retired spy and headmistress of the school for goodness sake) or her life (daughter of spy royalty and destined for great things)? Cammie Morgan may be the next generation of an elite sisterhood of female spies, but in her sophomore year, she's doing something riskier than any Gallagher Girl has ever done before – she's falling in love.