Then She Was Gone

More than a whiff of The Lovely Bones wafts through this haunting domestic noir from bestseller Jewell (I Found You). The disappearance of beautiful, brainy 15-year-old Ellie Mack in May 2005 from her north London neighborhood takes a terrible toll on her parents and siblings, even a decade later. Most profoundly affected is her now-divorced mother, Laurel. After a shocking development in the cold case jolts Laurel from her lonely limbo, Laurel stuns herself by agreeing to dinner with a man she meets in a café, genial author Floyd Dunn, and quickly falls into a relationship with him and the younger of his daughters, precocious nine-year-old Poppy—who reminds Laurel eerily in so many ways of Ellie. But then unsettling coincidences start to emerge, most notably Laurel’s discovery that Floyd’s former partner, Noelle Donnelly, who he claims vanished five years earlier after dumping Poppy with him, was Ellie’s math tutor. Skillfully told by several narrators (some of them ghostly), Jewell’s gripping novel transcends its plot improbabilities to connect with an emotionally resonant story of loss, grief, and renewal. (Apr.)