Mystery and Thriller

Mystery genre

The Voice Inside My Head

Seventeen-year-old Luke’s older sister, Pat, has always been his moral compass, like a voice inside his head, every time he has a decision to make. So when Pat disappears on a tiny island off the coast of Honduras and the authorities claim she’s drowned – despite the fact that they can’t produce a body – Luke heads to Honduras to find her because he knows something the authorities don’t. From the moment of her disappearance, Pat’s voice has become real, guiding him to Utila, where she had accepted a summer internship to study whale sharks. Once there, he meets several characters who describe his sister as a very different girl from the one knows. Does someone have a motive for wanting her dead? Determined to get to the bottom of Pat’s disappearance, Luke risks everything, including his own life, to find the answer.

The Midnight Dress

Quiet misfit Rose doesn’t expect to fall in love with the sleepy beach town of Leonora. Nor does she expect to become fast friends with beautiful, vivacious Pearl Kelly, organizer of the high school float at the annual Harvest Festival parade. It’s better not to get too attached when Rose and her father live on the road, driving their caravan from one place to the next whenever her dad gets itchy feet. But Rose can’t resist the mysterious charms of the town or the popular girl, try as she might. Pearl convinces Rose to visit Edie Baker, once a renowned dressmaker, now a rumored witch. Together Rose and Edie hand-stitch an unforgettable dress of midnight blue for Rose to wear at the Harvest Festival—a dress that will have long-lasting consequences on life in Leonora, a dress that will seal the fate of one of the girls.

Tower Of The Five Orders

Colophon Letterford’s life changed overnight when she uncovered Shakespeare’s lost manuscripts. Now the authenticity of those manuscripts is in question and the family publishing business is in danger. In this exciting mystery, thirteen-year-old Colophon travels from Oxford’s lofty Tower of the Five Orders to the dank depths of London’s sewers in her pursuit of truth and honor. But the stakes are high.

The Great Trouble

Eel, an orphan, and his best friend Florrie must help Dr. John Snow prove that cholera is spread through water, and not poisonous air, when an epidemic sweeps across their London neighborhood in 1854.

Thumb and the Bad Guys

Inspired by a movie shown at the local gym (with the whole town in attendance), 11-year-old Leon (aka Thumb) wants to track down a bad guy. After all, he thinks, without bad guys, the “Harry Potter” books would just be stories about school. And he wouldn’t mind being known as the Jake Danger of New Auckland. But with only 143 people in his remote British Columbia fishing village, surrounded by mountains and ocean, how could there even be any bad guys around? And where would they hide? But Thumb is determined, so he and his pal Susan conduct a stakeout. Their suspicions soon focus on bald, toothless old Kirk McKenna, who has the revolting habit of spitting on the sidewalk. Meanwhile, a new teacher, the odd Ms. Weatherby, has arrived in town wearing heavy makeup and a terrible wig. Maybe “she’s” the “bad guy” they’re seeking. Will the determined duo find their villain? Ken Roberts brings his trademark quirky characters, tight plotting, detailed portrait of small-town life, and lively humor to this fascinating story that also contains underlying messages about tolerance and the value of community.

Liar And Spy

Seventh grader Georges moves into a Brooklyn apartment building and meets Safer, a twelve-year-old self-appointed spy. Georges becomes Safer’s first spy recruit. His assignment? Tracking the mysterious Mr. X, who lives in the apartment upstairs. But as Safer becomes more demanding, Georges starts to wonder: what is a lie, and what is a game? How far is too far to go for your only friend?

Featured in Volume VI, Issue 2 of WOW Review.

Jellicoe Road

“What do you want from me?” he asks. What I want from every person in my life, I want to tell him. More. Abandoned by her mother on Jellicoe Road when she was eleven, Taylor Markham, now seventeen, is finally being confronted with her past. But as the reluctant leader of her boarding school dorm, there isn’t a lot of time for introspection. And while Hannah, the closest adult Taylor has to family, has disappeared, Jonah Griggs is back in town, moody stares and all. In this absorbing story by Melina Marchetta, nothing is as it seems and every clue leads to more questions as Taylor tries to work out the connection between her mother dumping her, Hannah finding her then and her sudden departure now, a mysterious stranger who once whispered something in her ear, a boy in her dreams, five kids who lived on Jellicoe Road eighteen years ago, and the maddening and magnetic Jonah Griggs, who knows her better than she thinks he does. If Taylor can put together the pieces of her past, she might just be able to change her future.

The Mystery Of The House Of Pigeons

A trinket-seller thinks he has found the son of his dead employer who owned the jewels of Samarkand. He hopes the boy will lead him to the jewels and tells him to beware of the House of Pigeons. The boy’s sister and friend think the old man is crazy as he always calls Parvez by the wrong name.

Torn

Only eighteen when she is sent to Afghanistan, British army medic Elinor Nielson is continually at odds with her hardnosed bunkmate, Heidi Larson, but connects with a mysterious Afghan girl and local children, as well as an American lieutenant.