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by Jessica Chiarella
When her true-crime podcast becomes an overnight sensation, a young woman is pulled into the web of a case that may offer a surprising connection to her own sister's disappearance years earlier.
It's been more than twenty years since Marti Reese's sister, Maggie, disappeared. Only eight-years-old at the time, Marti can't remember what happened, just that Maggie got into a car and never returned. After years of grief and countless false leads, Marti is coping as best she can: abandoning her marriage, drinking to forget, and documenting her never-ending search via a true-crime podcast. But when the podcast becomes an unexpected hit and Marti thinks she's finally ready to put it all behind her, a mysterious woman calls with new information that could lead her down a dangerous path.
For years, Ava Vreeland has been fighting to overturn her brother's murder conviction. After finding strange similarities between the two cases, Ava is certain there's a connection between the murder and Maggie's disappearance, one that could prove her brother's innocence. Together, Marti and Ava embark on a quest for the truth, but the more Marti digs, the more she's shaken by the answers she might find, and what it is she's even searching for...
"[A]n outstanding psychological thriller...Surprising twists accent this poignant story about two women, each with a single-minded goal. Chiarella is a writer to watch." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Readers who enjoy true crime, especially podcasts, as well as thrillers featuring unreliable narrators, will appreciate Chiarella's haunting story of lost girls, lost women, and revenge." – Library Journal (starred review)
"Chiarella expertly balances Marti's emotional turmoil and sense of loss with the dark mystery at the heart of The Lost Girls…You can't help but feel Marti's anguish, as well as admire her tenacity to uncover the truth despite knowing what she may find…[A] richly textured missing persons story." – BookPage
"Dark, clever and gripping. Starting with its ripped-from-the-headlines opening to its fast and furious descent down the rabbit hole of lies, deceit and revenge, The Lost Girls grabs you by the throat and never lets go. Fans of podcasts, true crime and edgy thrillers must read this book!" – Lisa Gardner, author of Before She Disappeared
"The Lost Girls is an up-to-the-minute modern thriller with a true-crime feel and a gritty protagonist unafraid to spit in justice's eye." – Alma Katsu, author of Red Widow
This information about The Lost Girls was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jessica Chiarella is the author of And Again. She holds an MA in writing and publishing from DePaul University and an MFA in creative writing from the University of California, Riverside. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.
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