The Academy Scarab Beetle Books in Order

The Academy Scarab Beetle takes place in the same wider universe as Ghost Bird, but it plays rougher. The lead here is Kayli Winchester, a smart, stubborn girl who has spent too long scraping by with theft, hustling, and sheer nerve. She is poor, tired, worried about her missing brother Wil, and not in the mood to trust anyone who promises help. That makes her a very different kind of Academy heroine.

This series throws her straight into the deep end.

Instead of Ashley Waters hallways and secret school politics, the Scarab Beetle books lean hard into romantic suspense. Kayli gets tangled up with another Academy team, Axel, Raven, Corey, Brandon, and Marc, with Blake and other allies complicating things even further. These boys are not polished saviors. They are messy, damaged, suspicious, sometimes reckless, and often operating close to the line between legal and criminal. Kayli fits them better than she wants to admit.

Charleston is still all over the series, but the mood is sharper here. The cases involve missing children, kidnappings, hidden money, cruise ships, fake identities, corrupt officials, private tech networks, and enemies who do not mind using real violence. Kayli is constantly being asked to go undercover, lie well, think fast, and decide who she can stand beside when every option looks compromised. The Academy offers protection, but it also comes with rules, pressure, and people who believe they know what is best for her.

The big thread running through the series is Wil. Kayli's search for her brother gives the books a steady ache under all the action. Even when she is caught in a mission, flirting with danger, or dealing with the team, Wil is never far from the center of her decisions. That keeps the story grounded. Kayli may be surrounded by attractive, highly capable guys, but she is not drifting through the plot. She is chasing something personal, and it keeps her sharp.

This branch of the universe bites harder.

If Ghost Bird is about a sheltered girl slowly learning to trust, Scarab Beetle is about a survivor who already knows how bad things can get. The romance is older, the danger is meaner, and the tone is more new adult than young adult. Even so, the same C L Stone threads are there, loyalty, found family, secret networks, and people trying to decide whether love makes them safer or simply easier to hurt. You can read the series on its own, but readers who already know the Academy world will catch extra resonance in the crossovers and the different view of how that hidden system works.