A successful film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane is content to forget her past--the family tragedy that marred her adolescence, her four largely miserable years at a New Hampshire boarding school, and the murder of her former roommate, Thalia Keith, in the spring of their senior year. Though the circumstances surrounding Thalia's death and the conviction of the school's athletic trainer, Omar Evans, are hotly debated online, Bodie prefers--needs--to let sleeping dogs lie. But when the Granby School invites her back to teach a course, Bodie is inexorably drawn to the case and its increasingly apparent flaws. In their rush to convict Omar, did the school and the police overlook other suspects? Is the real killer still out there? As she falls down the very rabbit hole she was so determined to avoid, Bodie begins to wonder if she wasn't as much of an outsider at Granby as she'd thought--if, perhaps, back in 1995, she knew something that might have held the key to solving the case. 

I Have Some Questions for You Fans shines an uncomfortable light back on our voyeuristic obsession with true-crime. Bodie Kane is generally a reliable narrator, but she’s also manipulative and obsessive, compulsively drawn to the center of Thalia Keith’s story. Author Rebecca Makkai skillfully addresses the complexities of the #MeToo movement, violence against women, racial profiling, and wrongful incarceration while still creating a suspenseful atmosphere and plot. This page-turner will stay with you, and you’ll find yourself thinking of it again the next time  true crime case gains a cult following. 

The It Girl
by Ruth Ware
Scout Press, 2023. 422 pages. Fiction 

April Clarke-Cliveden was the first person Hannah Jones met at Oxford. Vivacious, bright, occasionally vicious, and the ultimate it girl, she quickly pulled Hannah into her dazzling orbit. Together, they cultivated a group of devoted and inseparable friends -- Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily -- during their first term. By the end of the year, April was dead. Now, a decade later, Hannah and Will are expecting their first child, and the man convicted of killing April, former Oxford porter John Neville, has died in prison. Hannah is relieved to have finally put the past behind her, but her world is rocked when a young journalist comes knocking and presents new evidence that Neville may have been innocent. As Hannah reconnects with old friends and delves deeper into the mystery of April's death, she realizes that the friends she thought she knew all have something to hide ... including a murder. 

When the Stars Go Dark
by Paula McLain
Ballantine Books, 2021. 370 pages. Fiction 

Anna Hart is a seasoned missing persons detective in San Francisco with far too much knowledge of the darkest side of human nature. When unspeakable tragedy strikes her personal life, Anna, desperate and numb, flees to the Northern California village of Mendocino. She spent summers there as a child with her beloved grandparents, and now she believes it might be the only place left for her to heal. Yet the day she arrives, she learns a local teenage girl has gone missing. Anna is in no condition to become involved with the search--until a childhood friend, now the village sheriff, pleads for her help. Then, just days later, a twelve-year-old girl is abducted from her home. The crimes feel frighteningly reminiscent of the most crucial time in Anna's childhood, when a string of unsolved murders touched Mendocino ... As Anna becomes obsessed with these missing girls, she must learn that true courage means getting out of her own way and learning to let others in.

SGR