Shadowmaker

by Joan Lowery Nixon

Overview

For fans of Gillian Flynn, Caroline Cooney, and R.L. Stine comes Shadowmaker from four-time Edgar Allen Poe Young Adult Mystery Award winner Joan Lowery Nixon.
 
        When Katie Gillian and her mother move from Houston to a small Texas town, they never imagine that violence and intrigue will interrupt their six-month stay. Could the two bodies found have anything to do with the newspaper articles Katie’s reporter mother is writing—or with the shadowy figures Katie has noticed lurking outside her house at night?
 
“Strong female characters[,]…affecting and fast-paced, this mystery delivers.” –Publishers Weekly
 
“Nixon deftly weaves the ordinary difficulties of a new kid in school into a suspenseful mystery…[and her] characters are interestingly complicated.” –Booklist
 
“[A] smoothly knit novel.” –Kirkus Reviews

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307823502
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	09/25/2013
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	12 Years

About the Author

Joan Lowery Nixon was the author of more than 130 books for young readers and was the only four-time winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Best Young Adult Mystery Award. She received the award for The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore, The Séance, The Name of the Game Was Murder, and The Other Side of the Dark, which also won the California Young Reader Medal. Her historical fiction included the award-winning series The Orphan Train Adventures, Orphan Train Children, and Colonial Williamsburg: Young Americans.

Editorial Reviews

Katie Gillian's mother, a famous investigative journalist, is taking six months off to write a novel. In order to afford the leave, she and Katie move away from Houston (and Katie's performing-arts high school) to live in an inherited house on the Gulf Coast. Locals, young and old, aren't friendly, dance classes for Katie don't exist, and prowlers harass the isolated house at night. When Katie's mother is brought evidence of toxic waste dumping, she can't refuse to investigate. Katie finds that what's going on at the high school is related, and she struggles to understand her mother's passion for probing. Nixon deftly weaves the ordinary difficulties of a new kid in school into a suspenseful mystery. The conclusion to the waste-dumping plot comes too easily, but some of Nixon's characters are interestingly complicated.

Mary Harris Veeder