Noughts & Crosses is a series of young adult novels by British author Malorie Blackman, with six novels and three novellas. The series is speculative fiction describing an alternative history. The series takes place in an alternative 21st-century Britain.

At the time of the series, slavery had been abolished for some time, but segregation, similar to the Jim Crow Laws, continues to operate to keep the Crosses (dark-skinned people) in control of the Noughts (lighter-skinned people). An international organisation, the Pangaean Economic Community, exists. Seeming to be similar to the United Nations in scope but similar to the European Union in powers, it is playing a role in forcing change by directives and boycotts. Britain is known as Albion, Africa is one country called Zafrika, and Scandinavia — known as Fenno-Scandia — is the only Nought country left.

The first book is written from two different perspectives – Callum's and Sephy's (Persephone) – and their experiences of their entwined but very different worlds. The chapters alternate, with even chapters being Callum's and odd ones Sephy's.

There are six books in the series: Noughts and Crosses, Knife Edge, Checkmate, Double Cross, Crossfire, and Endgame.

Nought and Crosses

Persephone "Sephy" Hadley is a Cross and the daughter of a wealthy senior politician, Kamal Hadley, who later becomes Prime Minister. Callum McGregor is a Nought, and they used to play together when Jasmine Adeyebe-Hadley, Sephy's mother, employed Meggie McGregor, Callum's mother, as a nanny. Ever since Jasmine fired Meggie, however, Sephy and Callum's friendship has been secret, as such interracial friendships are frowned upon by society.

The two meet again in Heathcroft, a high school for Crosses that now accepts the best-performing Noughts. Sephy is overjoyed to see Callum in her class, but most of her classmates do not accept her association with a Nought. Despite this, she deepens her relationship with Callum, and even sits at a table with Noughts, upsetting Callum, though they eventually make up.

Meanwhile, Callum's elder brother, Jude, and his father, Ryan, join the Liberation Militia (LM), a violent paramilitary organisation against Cross supremacy. Jude and Ryan are accused of participating in the LM bombing of Dundale Shopping Centre, and Callum is also accused after he told Sephy to leave the shopping centre. He is ultimately spared due to a lack of evidence. Callum has to leave school, and Ryan faces the gallows. Jasmine, remembering her prior friendship with the McGregor family, secretly hires a prominent Cross lawyer to defend Ryan. Escaping hanging, Ryan is given a life sentence but is killed by an electric fence, supposedly in an escape attempt.

Sephy decides to start anew and persuades a reluctant Jasmine to let her attend a boarding school, Chivers. She hasn't heard from Callum in a week, so she writes a letter asking him to run away with her and that if he doesn't contact her, she'll be leaving for Chivers. Callum, however, has decided to join the LM, and doesn't read the letter until it's too late. He sprints to her house and fails to catch up to the car as it pulls out of the driveway. Having not seen Callum running behind, Sephy concludes that their friendship is no longer as important to him as she had thought.

Years later, Sephy returns home from Chivers. Upon entering the house, she discovers a letter by Callum telling her to meet him at the family's private beach. She goes there, but discovers Callum is there with other LM members to kidnap her and hold her hostage. She's taken to their hideout and the LM members demand the release of at least five LMs and a ransom for Sephy. The LM's second-in-command, Andrew Dorn, then visits Callum and his cell members.

Callum is able to visit an injured Sephy in the room where she is being held. Alone together, Callum reveals to her his unsuccessful attempt to catch up to her before she left for Chivers. Their love rekindles, and the two end up having sex. Afterwards, Sephy escapes into the woods, chased by Jude and another LM member. Callum finds her first and gives false directions to the others; he then gives Sephy instructions to escape. Sephy then tells Callum that she'd seen Andrew before in her house with Kamal, revealing that Andrew is a government informant. Informing the rest of the LM about Andrew, the remaining members agreed to split up and keep a low profile, not meeting up again until Callum's birthday.

Sephy then begins to experience strange symptoms, and takes a pregnancy test, revealing that she is pregnant with Callum's child. When her parents learn of this, they pressure her to have an abortion, which Sephy repeatedly refuses. Meanwhile, Callum is working as a mechanic as a cover, and hears Kamal on the radio being interrogated over whether his daughter is pregnant. Callum then meets up with Sephy in the Hadleys' rose garden, and she confirms the rumors. While they're meeting, they are discovered and Callum is arrested. Nobody believed Sephy when she maintains she was not raped, and Callum is sentenced to be hanged.

Kamal tells Sephy that if she keeps her child, Callum will be hanged, but if she has the abortion, he will serve years in prison instead. Kamal makes a similar offer to Callum, wanting Callum to publicly admit to raping Sephy. Both decide to keep the baby, and Callum is hanged at the gallows.

Knife Edge

Sephy, living with Callum's mother, Meggie, becomes increasingly fond of her daughter, Callie Rose. Callum's guard, Jack, delivers a letter written by Callum before he died, stating he never loved her and couldn't believe that Sephy was stupid enough to fall for him, and tells her to forget about him. Meggie tries to convince Sephy that Callum was forced into writing the letter by others, but Sephy believes the letter and develops postnatal depression.

She meets Jaxon, a hot-tempered man with a band, the Midges. He offers Sephy a singing part, but the Noughts are prejudiced against her because she is a Cross. In her emotional turmoil, she begins to neglect Callie Rose.

Callum's brother, Jude, blames Sephy for the terrible losses his family has suffered and is determined to destroy Sephy's life by any means necessary. He meets Cara, a Cross, and befriends her to access her money. After spending a lot of time with her, he begins to fall in love with her, despite his hatred of Crosses. Frustrated and confused with his feelings for a Cross, Jude beats her severely and runs off with a large amount of money. After Cara dies in the hospital, Jude is eventually arrested and charged with Cara's murder. He's almost guaranteed to receive the death sentence due to the wealth of evidence against him.

Sephy struggles with seeing Meggie losing the last remaining member of her family and decides to give a false alibi to Jude for Cara's death for Meggie's sake. He escapes the death penalty and only serves a few month in prison for LM membership; afterwards, he accuses Andrew of Cara's murder in addition to being a government informer; Andrew is soon shot dead by the LM. Despite Sephy saving his life, still holds a grudge against her and plots revenge.

Sephy's life begins to fall apart, as the Crosses hate her for helping Jude escape the noose, and the Noughts because she didn't come to his aid sooner. While singing "Rainbow Child" to Callie Rose, she hugs her too tightly, causing the child to stop breathing. The book ends with Meggie repeatedly screaming at Sephy, "What have you done?"

Checkmate

After her friend Tobey calls her a terrorist's daughter, Callie struggles with discovering the real career of her father: he was considered a terrorist. She becomes angry with her mother for hiding the truth and decides to follow in the path of her father, cutting off her friendship with Tobey despite his attempts to apologise.

Sephy feels trapped and rejects an offer of marriage from her boyfriend, Sonny. She then meets Nathan, the owner of the restaurant in which she sings, and the two start a relationship. Nathan later proposes and Sephy accepts, but Sonny comes back into her life. She's left confused but engaged.

Jude takes Callie Rose to Kamal's house. After Kamal denies that she is his granddaughter, Jude, now the General of the LM, exploits her anger to groom her to become a suicide bomber. Jasmine attempts to bring Callie and Sephy closer together, but develops breast cancer and struggles with her mortality. Eventually, Jasmine traps Sephy and Callie Rose in her wine cellar where the two reconcile.

Celine, the daughter of Callum's prison guard Jack, gives a letter that was written by Callum before he was hanged. Callum told Jack this was the letter with his true feelings; in the letter, he wished he would've been able to stay with Sephy because he loved her so much. He also tells Sephy to keep his past secret from their child.

In the book's climax, Jasmine sets off Jude's bomb to prevent him from injuring anyone else, dying in the process. Kamal had been the intended target of the bomb, but he loses power after Jasmine's letter to the press about his rampant corruption is published.

Double Cross

The book opens with Kamal's party badly losing to a more liberal government. Callie Rose fears the return of her vengeful uncle Jude, and the press fails to mention Jude in connection to the bomb.

Callie Rose's best friend and later boyfriend, Tobey, is worried about his own future. As a Nought boy at an exclusive school, he hopes to keep out of trouble, go to university, get a good job and leave behind the dangerous streets of his childhood. However, he gets caught up in gang warfare when he's offered the chance to earn some easy money by making a few "deliveries." He finds out the delivery was for one of the prominent members of the Dowds, a notorious gang of Crosses.

He keeps this a secret from Callie Rose, and after they consummate their relationship, Callie Rose leaves but promises to return. The next day, when Tobey and Callie Rose meet up with their friends, Callie Rose is shot by a hail of bullets from McAuley, the boss of a gang of Noughts, the rivals to the Dowds. Her surgery is successful, but she remains in a coma. Sephy is furious at Tobey for not telling the police who shot Callie Rose, but is unaware that Tobey plans on getting revenge on McAuley himself.

While Callie Rose is in hospital, Tobey gets a new job at the Dowds' restaurant. He meets Rebecca, Vanessa Dowd's daughter. Rebecca enjoys his company as he treats her like a person, unlike the other boys who are interested only in her family and money. Tobey eventually goes out with her but is conflicted between her and Callie Rose.

Callie Rose wakes from her coma and finds out that Jude was indeed killed by the bomb. However, she also discovers that Tobey is now dating Rebecca, as she had been in a coma for so long.

During a visit to Vanessa Dowd's house, Tobey is revealed to have once made deliveries to McAuley, shocking Rebecca. Tobey reassures her that he does not work for him any longer, but he decides to end their relationship and be just friends. When Rebecca leaves, McAuley appears and stabs her. He then orders Tobey to meet him at his warehouse.

Aware of McAuley's intent to kill him, Tobey sets up a plan with Owen Dowd, Rebecca's brother. He invests in one of McAuley's minions to frame him as a traitor. The plan works, but Owen and Tobey are almost killed in the process. However, one of Tobey's friends, Dan, comes in and kills McAuley's minions, saving both their lives. Dan then goes on the run for the murders.

When he returns to Callie, Tobey admits to his actions leading to the death of five people and why Dan is now on the run; Callie replies that Jasmine and Jude died because of her. They eventually resume their relationship. In the epilogue, it is revealed that both Callie and Tobey go to university to study law and that Tobey has set up and helps fund the Meadowview Shelter to help those with drug and alcohol addictions.

Crossfire

The fifth book in the series, Crossfire, was published on 8 August 2019.^[1] Part of the book picks up months after Double Cross on Callie's birthday, exactly one year after Checkmate; the rest occurs eighteen years later.

Tobey's guilt over Rebecca's death leads him to believe he no longer deserves Callie Rose, estranging himself from her. Sephy and Nathan marry, and she's pregnant with a son, Troy, by Callie Rose's next birthday. During the party, Tobey and Callie Rose have a huge argument over his continued secrecy about his involvement in McAuley's death. He decides to end his and Callie Rose's relationship for good.

During the party, Tobey has sex with a woman named Misty, who becomes pregnant and gives birth to Tobey's daughter Libby. He attempts to have a relationship with her for their child's sake, but it falls apart.

In his resulting depression, Tobey briefly joins Nought Forever, the Liberation Militia's spiritual successor, but soon quits. Tobey pursues a career in politics and is aided and bankrolled by Dan, now a powerful gangster. He uses his growing fortune to financially support Misty and Libby, but Misty refuses to let him see their daughter and conceals his identity from Libby. She gradually spends Libby's entire trust fund, becoming an alcoholic and drug addict, and abuses Libby, who struggles with anxiety and self-harm.

Troy and Libby become friends, but after a brief romance, their relationship sours and they become bitter rivals. Callie Rose attends law school and later works for a prominent lawyer, becoming one of the best barristers in the country; Nathan is killed in a hit-and-run, leaving Sephy and Troy devastated. Over the next two years Sonny returns to Sephy's life and they resume their relationship, but Troy discovers what appears to be the same car that killed Nathan on Sonny's land, leaving him convinced that Sonny murdered his father.

With Dan's help, Tobey is elected as the first Nought Prime Minister, but Dan is later murdered at a party attended by Tobey, Sephy, and Owen Dowd. Tobey is arrested for the crime and enlists Callie Rose to defend him. The two go on to have a one-night stand, but Callie Rose is repulsed to learn of his past affiliation with Nought Forever. When she threatens to drop him as a client, he blackmails her into continuing to defend him by threatening to reveal their affair to her employers.

When she finally learns of her father's identity, Libby disowns Misty and contacts Tobey. Unwilling to lose the financial support Tobey has been providing, Misty abducts Libby and Troy, holding them hostage to extort more money from Tobey. However, several of Dan's former enforcers murder Misty and take the teenagers captive themselves, demanding that Callie Rose drop Tobey as a client and that he pleads guilty. In an effort to get Callie Rose to comply with the kidnappers' demands, Tobey tells her that Sephy murdered Dan, and that he covered for her by planting evidence to make himself appear guilty. Despite this revelation and the danger to Libby and Troy, Callie Rose continues to defend Tobey, who pleads his innocence as the trial begins. In response, the kidnappers decide to leave Libby and Troy to die, sealing them in their cellar prison.

Endgame

A sixth and final instalment, Endgame, was released on September 16, 2021.^[2] The book picks up immediately after the events of Crossfire, while containing flashbacks to the night of Dan Jeavons' murder.

It is revealed that all the guests at Dan's party were invited due to their hatred for Tobey, and that Dan had had a confrontation with every one of them during the night: Eva, his right-hand woman, for her trafficking drugs and people against his and Tobey's orders, Tobey, for his intentions to break off their alliance upon becoming Prime Minister, and Sephy, over his extortion of money from her and Nathan's restaurant along with Sephy's belief he'd had Nathan executed.

Sephy left the party early but later returned to find Dan dead; she was caught on CCTV handling the murder weapon, leading Tobey to believe she killed him. Upon discovering this from Callie Rose, Sephy tracks down and questions several of the other guests, deducing the real murderer's identity. Sephy also accepts Sonny's proposal, but continues to suffer from nightmares of Callum, still tormented with guilt over his death 36 years earlier.

Having concealed Sephy's presence at Dan's party, Callie Rose is arrested for obstruction of justice, and despite being quickly bailed out, her legal career is effectively ruined. She and Tobey work relentlessly to track down Troy and Libby, enlisting the aid of Callie Rose's trusted private investigator Duba and Dan's former primary enforcer Jarvis. The former lovers gradually reconcile, particularly after Tobey vows to do whatever is necessary to regain her love and trust, even proposing to her.

Duba is revealed to have manipulated Misty into abducting Troy and Libby, though absent when Misty was killed. Evading and killing several of Eva's enforcers, Duba retrieves Troy and Libby, anonymously contacts Tobey to reinstate Misty's original deal for a vast amount of money, and locks the teenagers in a car rigged with a bomb.

Sephy, Callie Rose, Tobey, Duba, Sonny, and Jarvis then confront Eva, who has seized control of Dan's criminal enterprises and has had Owen Dowd asssassinated. She admits to hijacking Troy and Libby's kidnapping and having Misty killed, but also informs them that neither she nor Dan ordered Nathan's death, confirming that Sonny murdered him. She also reveals that Tobey was the true crime lord all along, with Dan acting as the decoy leader of his operation, but that he planned to abandon his life of crime upon being elected.

Deducing that Duba abducted Troy and Libby, Tobey tracks his phone, and the police rescue the teens. Duba tries to kill Tobey, but Sephy intercepts the bullets and is fatally wounded, while Tobey overpowers and kills Duba. Sephy dies in Callie Rose's arms after telling her to save Tobey. Five days after Sephy's death, Sonny is involved in a car crash that renders him comatose.

In a video message recorded by Sephy prior to her death, she informs Callie Rose and Tobey that she discovered Dan was murdered by his butler for impregnating his teenage daughter. The group elects not to turn in the culprit, and the case against Tobey is ultimately dropped due to lack of evidence, allowing him to continue as Prime Minister.

Jarvis murders Eva and assumes control of the criminal underworld on Tobey's orders, but Callie Rose finds out. Taking her mother's last words to heart, she agrees to marry Tobey in order to save him from himself, on the condition that he commits no further crimes and to always be completely honest with her. Libby finally meets her father, and she moves in with Callie Rose, Troy and Meggie, as does Tobey following the wedding.

During the next three months Libby is elected head student of Heathcroft High, and she and Troy form a sibling relationship and undergo therapy for their experiences, while Callie Rose considers starting a career in politics.

Novellas

Characters

The characters from all books from the series are as follows:

Audio books

Audio books have been made from the novels in the series as follows:

• Noughts and Crosses (unabridged) - narrated by Sian Blake and Paul Chequer^[3]
• Noughts and Crosses (abridged) - narrated by Nina Sosanya and Nigel Greaves
• Knife Edge (abridged) - narrated by Nina Sosanya, John Hasler and Joan Walker
• Checkmate (abridged) - narrated by Nina Sosanya, John Hasler, Joan Walker and Adjoa Andoh
• Double Cross (abridged) - narrated by Nigel Pilkington, Nicole Davis and Joan Walker
• Crossfire (unabridged) - narrated by Vivienne Acheampong, Josh Dylan and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett

Adaptations

Critical reception

On 5 November 2019 BBC News included Noughts & Crosses on its list of the 100 most inspiring novels.^[14]

The Guardian ranked Noughts & Crosses #88 in its list of 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.^[15]

Awards and nominations

• 2002, Lancashire Children's Book of the Year.^[16]
• 2002, Red House Children's Book Award.^[16][17]
• 2002, Sheffield Children's Book Award.^[16][17]
• 2003, Wirral Paperback of the Year Award.^[16][17]
• 2004, Fantastic Fiction Award.^[16]
• 2005, Berkshire Book Award (shortlist).^[17]
• 2005, Lancashire Children's Book of the Year (shortlist).^[17]
• 2005, Redbridge Teenage book Award (shortlist).^[17]
• 2006, Lancashire Children's Book of the Year (shortlist).^[17]
• 2006, Staffordshire Young People's Book of the Year.^[17]

See also

Fable (1965 TV play)^[18]

References

External links

• Noughts & Crosses at Malorie Blackman's official website
• Knife Edge at Malorie Blackman's official website
• Checkmate at Malorie Blackman's official website
• Double Cross at Malorie Blackman's official website
• Malorie Blackman's plot description of Noughts & Crosses at meettheauthor.com