The Missing One

November 3, 2014
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.).

August 1, 2014
The loss of a mother can be life changing, even for Kal, whose relationship with her mother, Elena, was tenuous at best. Elena had a mysterious past that she refused to speak about, and her coldness even extended to Finn, Kal's son. After Elena's death, Kal finds a series of postcards in her mother's desk, all with the same message, thinking of you, and signed by a woman she's never heard of, Susannah Gillespie. When she finds a couple of text messages on her husband's phone that lead her to believe he is having an affair, Kal decides on the spur of the moment to take Finn and travel to Vancouver in hopes of tracking down and learning something about her mother's past. But Susannah is quite unstable, and Kal and Finn's lives are in danger as the tension ratchets up and Kal learns how strong a mother's bond with her child can be. Eventually, she finds documents about her mother's early life that shatter everything she ever knew about herself and her family. This gripping family drama should appeal to Nancy Pickard fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)