Gillian Flynn Books Imprint Revealed 1st Book Cover

Nell Young worked with her father in the Map Division of the New York Public Library until he became infuriated over her challenge that a gas-station highway map should be checked over rather than assuming it was not important. He had her fired and they haven’t spoken since. Now he’s found dead in his office and she discovers that he’d kept the map—and more importantly that map has been marked missing in libraries all over the country. You’ll get to know Nell in the now as she tries to solve the mystery of the map and you’ll get to know her parents and their group of friends, the Cartographers, when they were in graduate school.

This is one of those books that deals with a dark topic without being graphic for the sake of it, and using humor as a great balance. Plus, revenge. Nessa, Harriett, and Jo are three middle-aged women who during turmoil in their lives realize they’ve suddenly got a gift. Like Nessa being visited by the ghosts of dead girls hoping to be found, their killers punished. And it’s through finding a body that these different women come together to try and solve a slew of missing girl cases that the police have been treating as runaways for far too long. This is easily one of my favorite books this year, with a great audiobook narrated by January LaVoy.

(TW adult predators of teen girls as theme/ suicide / sexual harassment, groping/ domestic child abuse, not graphic/ mentions past late term pregnancy loss / sexual assault not on page or detailed, aftermath from a character not involved’s POV of being blocked from calling police)