The Night My Sister Went Missing

As the book opens, 17-year-old narrator Kurt Carmody recounts his sister's disappearance from a dune party, where she was last seen on the abandoned pier on one of New Jersey's barrier islands. Someone brought a gun to the party; several partygoers heard the sound of a shot, and Casey vanished from the end of the pier-no trace of blood, no body. Kurt finds a quiet corner of the police station where he can overhear the cops' interrogations of the high school students who were at the party, each teen's answers throwing suspicion in a new direction. Through Kurt's first-person narrative, Plum-Ucci (The Body of Christopher Creed) addresses peer pressure and the chasm between social strata in this beachside town. Suspects include Stacy Kearney (the ""Fallen Queen type""), granddaughter of the island's wealthiest man, who is allegedly pregnant, and Stacy's ex-boyfriend Mark Stern, who had just started dating Casey. All the members of this loosely connected community harbor secrets they do not want to be revealed. But in the end, someone's secret comes to light with devastating consequences. Ages 12-up.