Games Untold

Avery Grambs is one of the collection’s primary characters. She appears in “That Night in Prague,” “The Same Backward as Forward,” “The Cowboy and the Goth,” “One Hawthorne Night,” and “$3CR3T $@NT@.” She is the protagonist and first-person narrator of the stories “That Night in Prague” and “$3CR3T $@NT@,” and appears in the margins of “The Same Backward as Forward,” “The Cowboy and the Goth,” and “One Hawthorne Night.”

In the narrative present, Avery is 18 years old and has just inherited Tobias Hawthorne’s fortune. Now the youngest billionaire on record, Avery isn’t sure how to adapt to her wealth and process her legacy. While her mother Hannah and Tobias were lovers years prior, Avery’s biological father is a man named Ricky Grambs, with whom Avery has never had a relationship. Because her mother recently died, Avery is largely on her own. This is why she relies on her relationship with Jameson Hawthorne. Her romance with Jameson features in “That Night in Prague.” The new couple gallivants around the Czech city, inventing games for each other and solving puzzles. Avery has readily accepted these facets of the Hawthorne tradition as her mother also enjoyed games.