The Missing One

British author Atkins’s engrossing debut immediately immerses the reader in intrigue. Soon after Kali MacKenzie, who lives in Oxford, England, discovers suspicious text messages on the phone of her husband, Doug, she gets a call from her sister, Alice, telling her to come say goodbye to their artist mother, Elena, who’s dying of breast cancer. Growing up, Kali found Elena cold and distant, though Alice did not. At her mother’s home in Sussex, Kali discovers brief cryptic postcards in Elena’s painting studio; they were sent once a year from the Susannah Gillespie Gallery, located on Spring Tide Island off the coast of British Columbia, and signed “Susannah.” Conflicted by her emotions, Kali impetuously leaves Doug, whom she’s unwilling to face, and flees with their 18-month-old son to Vancouver, where she hopes that talking with Susannah will provide an explanation for Elena’s rejection. In the fraught process of unearthing her mother’s past, Kali finds an inner strength. Agent: Judith Murray, Greene & Heaton (U.K.). (Feb.)