NINE LIARS

Senior year is not off to a great start for Stevie Bell: She’s antsy with no cases to solve, stressed by college applications, and missing her long-distance boyfriend terribly.

So when David invites Stevie to visit him in England, she immediately accepts and, with the help of friends Janelle Franklin, Vi Harper-Tomo, and Nate Fisher, gets a study-abroad trip approved for all four of them. Upon their arrival, David introduces them to his classmate Izzy, who has a story to tell. In 1995, a tightknit group of Cambridge graduates who called themselves the Nine arrived at a country estate for a summer getaway. The morning after their arrival, they discovered the mangled remains of two members. Although the police concluded it was a burglary gone wrong, Angela, Izzy’s aunt and a surviving member of the Nine, recently let slip her suspicion of a more sinister explanation for the deaths. Stevie’s deductive skills are put to the test, but other concerns—her relationship with David, graduation and inevitable separation from her friends, a persistent feeling of inadequacy—compete for her attention and occasionally push her anxiety, which she manages with medication, to the brink. The exploration of the importance of friendship (with parallels between the Nine and Stevie’s group) adds emotional vulnerability to this book, which has a well-developed sense of place and features the series’ signature humor and layered mystery elements. The cast includes diversity in race, gender identity, and sexual orientation.

Immersive and genre-savvy.