Calling all true crime fans: who wants to solve a murder? a fictional murder, obviously, so you can have fun solving a case without having to deal with, you know, dead bodies. unless your job is to solve real life murders? in which case, thanks. But for the rest of us, there’s a lot about mystery books that keeps us wanting more.
You are reading: Young adult mystery books
There are fantastic characters that can’t be trusted, the stakes are high from start to finish, and the thrill of trying to figure out the story for ourselves. it’s like a game of law & request: sv(you).
Whether you’re the type of reader huddled by the fire or on the edge of your seat, these mysteries are not to be missed. this list features stories from the past, present, and future, and we guarantee there’s something for everyone. so grab your deer stalker hat, your magnifying glass and get ready to go investigate. These are our top mystery book recommendations!
best mystery books
that will keep you guessing
1. the box in the woods by maureen johnson
📚 This is a standalone that is part of the: Truly Devious world
amateur detective stevie bell needs a good kill. After catching a killer at his high school, he returns home for a normal (ie boring) summer.
But then he gets a message from the owner of Sunny Pines, formerly known as Camp Wonder Falls, the site of the notorious cold case, the Box in the Woods murders. In 1978, four camp counselors were murdered in the woods outside the town of Barlow Corners, their bodies left on a gruesome display. The new owner offers Stevie an invitation: come to camp and help him work on a true crime podcast about the case.
stevie agrees, as long as she can bring her friends from ellingham academy. nothing sounds better than spending a summer together, investigating old murders.
but something evil still lurks in the corners of barlow. When Stevie opens the lid of this long-dormant case, he gets much more than she bargained for. the box in the forest will leave room for more victims. This time, Stevie may not make it out alive.
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2. the darkness outside of us by eliot schrefer
two guys, alone in space. Sworn enemies sent on the same rescue mission.
Ambrose wakes up in the coordinated effort with no recollection of a pitch. there are more that don’t add up: evidence indicates that strangers have been on board, the ship’s operating system is voiced by her mother, and her handsome, brooding shipmate has barricaded himself. But nothing will stop Ambrose from making her mission succeed, not when she’s rescuing her own sister.
To survive the ship’s secrets, Ambrose and Kodiak must work together and learn to trust each other. . . especially once they find out what they’re really up against. love could be the only way to survive.
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3. a good girl’s guide to murder by holly jackson
everyone at fairview knows the story.
andie bell, cute and popular high school student, was murdered by her boyfriend, sal singh, who later committed suicide. it was all anyone could talk about. And five years later, Pip sees how tragedy still haunts her town.
but you can’t shake the feeling that there was something more to what happened that day. She met Sal when she was a child and he was always very nice to her. How is it possible that he was a murderer?
Now that she’s a senior herself, Pip decides to reexamine the closed case for her final project, at first only to cast doubt on the original investigation. but she soon uncovers a trail of dark secrets that might actually turn out to be innocent. . . and the line between past and present begins to blur. someone at fairview doesn’t want pip to search for answers and now her own life could be in danger.
This is the story of an investigation turned obsession, full of twists and turns and with an ending you’d never expect.
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4. now entering addamsville by francesca zappia
When someone burns down the home of the school janitor and he dies in the blaze, everyone in Addamsville, Indiana, points a finger at Zora. Never mind that Zora has been on the straight and narrow since her father was thrown in jail. With everyone looking for evidence against her, her only choice is to uncover the identity of the real killer.
there is a big problem: zora has no clues. no one does. Addamsville has a history of tragedy, and thirty years ago a similar series of fires left several residents dead. the arsonist was never caught.
Now, Zora must team up with her cousin Artemis, a self-proclaimed annoying historian from Addamsville, to clear her name. But with a popular ghost-hunting TV show irritating the townspeople, almost no support from her family and friends, and rumors spiraling out of control, things aren’t looking good. Zora will have to read between the lines of the addamsville ghost stories before she becomes one.
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5. ghost wood song by erica waters
Sawkill Girls meets Beautiful Creatures in this lush and eerie debut, where the boundary between reality and nightmares is as thin as the veil between the living and the dead.
If I could have a violin made from Dad’s bones, I’d play it. she would learn all the secrets he kept.
Shady Grove inherited her father’s ability to summon ghosts from the grave with her violin, but she also knows that violin melodies only bring trouble and darkness.
But when his brother is framed for murder, he can’t let the dead keep his secrets.
To clear his name, he’ll have to make those ghosts sing.
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6. libba bray’s fortunetellers
Evie O’Neill has been exiled from her boring old hometown and shipped off to the bustling streets of New York City—and she is pos-i-tute-ly ecstatic. It’s 1926, and New York is filled with speakeasies, Ziegfeld girls, and rakish pickpockets. The only catch is that she has to live with her uncle Will and his unhealthy obsession with the occult.
Evie worries that he will discover her darkest secret: a supernatural power that has only gotten her in trouble so far. But when police find a murdered girl marked with a cryptic symbol and call Will to the scene, Evie realizes her gift could help catch a serial killer.
As Evie jumps headfirst into a dance with a killer, other stories unfold in the city that never sleeps. a young man named memphis is caught between two worlds. a showgirl named theta is running from her past. A student named Jericho hides a shocking secret. And unknown to all, something dark and evil has awakened.
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7. you were never here by kathleen peacock
See Also: Hibernation Book List for Little Learners – Pocket of Preschool
Cat hasn’t been to Montgomery Falls, the town her family founded, since she was twelve years old. Since the summer she discovered she could do things that no normal twelve-year-old could do. Since she had her first kiss with Riley Fraser. Since she destroyed their friendship.
Now, five years later, she’s back and Riley is missing.
When riley’s brother noah asks for help finding out what happened, cat is torn between wanting to know the truth and protecting the secret she’s been keeping since that summer she and riley stopped speaking. only one option will put her in the sights of an assassin…
- but you were never here now!
8. one of us lies by karen m. mcmanus
yale hope bronwyn has never publicly broken a rule. Sports star Cooper only knows what he’s up to on the baseball field. Bad boy Nate is one false step away from a life of crime. Prom queen, addy, holds together the cracks of her perfect life. And outsider Simon, creator of Bayview High’s notorious gossip app, won’t speak of either of them again.
He dies 24 hours before he can post his deepest secrets online. the investigators conclude that it is not an accident. all of them are suspicious.
everyone has secrets, right? what really matters is how far you will go to protect them.
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9. two can keep a secret by karen m. mcmanus
echo ridge is a small town in the united states. Ellery has never been there, but she has heard all about it. his aunt disappeared there at the age of seventeen. And just five years ago, a homecoming queen put the city on the map when she was murdered. Now Ellery has to move there to live with a grandmother he barely knows.
The city is perfect, but it hides secrets. And before school starts for Ellery, someone declared Homecoming season open, promising to make it as dangerous as it was five years ago. then, almost as if to prove it, another girl disappears.
ellery knows all about secrets. his mother has them; his grandmother too. And the longer he’s at echo ridge, the clearer it becomes that everyone is hiding something. The thing is, secrets are dangerous and most people aren’t good at keeping them. That’s why at echo ridge, it’s safer to keep your secrets to yourself.
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10. white rabbit by caleb roehrig
rufus holt is having the worst night of his life. It begins with the reappearance of his ex-boyfriend, Sebastian, the guy who stomped on his heart like a spent cigarette. Just as Rufus is getting ready to move on, Sebastian appears out of nowhere and says that they need to “talk”. things couldn’t get any worse, right?
then rufus gets a call from his sister april, asking for help. He and Sebastian find her, drenched in blood and holding a knife, next to the dead body of her boyfriend, Fox Whitney.
April swears he didn’t kill the fox. Rufus knows her too well to believe she’s telling him the whole truth, but April has something she needs. her price is her help. Now, with no one to trust except the boy she wants to hate but can’t stop loving, Rufus has one night to clear his sister’s name… or die trying.
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11. sadie de courtney summers
Sadie hasn’t had an easy life. Growing up alone, she has been raising Ella’s sister Mattie De Ella in a small isolated town, doing her best to provide them with a normal life and keep them afloat.
but when mattie turns up dead, sadie’s whole world comes crashing down. After a somewhat botched police investigation, Sadie is determined to bring her sister’s killer to justice, and she sets out on a few clues to find him.
When west mccray, a radio personality working on a segment about America’s small, forgotten towns, hears sadie’s story at a local gas station, he becomes obsessed with finding the missing girl. She starts her own podcast as she follows Sadie’s journey, trying to figure out what happened, hoping to find her before it’s too late.
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12. the kara thomas cheerleaders
there are no cheerleaders left in the city of sunnybrook.
first was the car accident: two girls disappeared after hitting a tree on a rainy night. not long after, the murders occurred. those two girls were killed by the man next door. the police shot him, so no one will ever know why he did it. Monica’s sister was the last cheerleader to die. After her suicide, Sunnybrook High disbanded the cheerleading squad. no one wanted to be reminded of the girls he lost.
That was five years ago. Now the faculty and students of Sunnybrook High School want to remember the lost cheerleaders. But for Monica, it’s not that easy. she just wants to forget only that monica’s world is starting to fall apart. there’s the letters on her stepdad’s desk, a years-old cell phone dug up, a strange new friend at school… whatever happened five years ago isn’t over. some people in the city know more than they say. And somehow Monica is at the center of it all.
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13. people like us by dana mele
kay donovan may have skeletons in her closet, but the past is the past and she has completely reinvented herself. she is now a star soccer player whose group of beautiful girlfriends run her private school with effortless popularity and acerbic wit. But when she finds a girl’s body in the lake, Kay’s carefully constructed life begins to unravel.
the dead girl has left kay on a computer-coded scavenger hunt that, as it unfolds, begins to implicate suspect after suspect, until kay herself finds herself in the crosshairs of a murder investigation. murder. But if Kay is finally cornered, she’ll do whatever it takes to survive. because at bates academy, the truth is something you do…not something that happened.
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14. the loneliest girl in the universe by lauren james
The daughter of two astronauts, Romy Silvers is no stranger to life in space. But she never knew how isolating the universe could be until her parents’ tragic deaths left her alone on the Infinity, a spaceship speeding away from Earth.
Romy tries to make the best of her lonely situation, but with only brief messages from her therapist on earth to keep her company, she can’t help but feel like something is missing. It seems like a dream come true when NASA warns him that another ship, eternity, will join infinity.
Romy begins exchanging messages with j, the captain of eternity, and their friendship breathes new life into their world. But as eternity draws near, Romy discovers that J’s mission is more than he could have imagined. and suddenly, there are worse things than being alone….
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15. monday doesn’t come because of tiffany d. jackson
Monday Charles is missing, and only Claudia seems to notice. Claudia and Monday have always been inseparable—more sisters than friends. So when Monday doesn’t turn up for the first day of school, Claudia’s worried.
when he doesn’t show up the second day or the second week, claudia knows something is wrong. her on Monday she would not leave her alone to endure trials and bullies. not after last year’s rumors and not with her grades at stake. Claudia now needs her best and only friend more than ever. But Monday’s mother refuses to give Claudia a straight answer, and Monday’s sister April is even less helpful.
As Claudia digs deeper into her friend’s disappearance, she discovers that no one seems to remember the last time she saw her on Monday. How can a teenage girl disappear without anyone noticing that she’s gone?
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16. #murdertrending by gretchen mcneil
Welcome to the near future, where good and honest citizens can enjoy watching the executions of society’s most infamous convicted felons, streaming live on The Postman app from the suburbanized prison island Alcatraz 2.0.
When seventeen-year-old Dee Guerrera wakes up in a daze, lying on the floor of a dimly lit warehouse, she realizes she’s about to be the app’s next victim. Knowing that hardened criminals get a taste of her own medicine in this place is one thing, but she refuses to turn around and die for a heinous crime she didn’t commit. Will Ella Dee and her newly formed Death Row Breakfast Club gang prove her innocence before she winds up unjustly murdered for the world to see? Or will the postman’s cast of executioners kill them one by one?
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17. all this is true by lygia day peñaflor
Miri Tan loved the book Undertow like it was a living being. So when she and her friends went to a book signing to hear the author, Fatima Ro, they concocted a plan to get close to her.
soleil johnston wanted to be a writer one day. When she and her friends started dating her favorite author, Fatima Ro, she couldn’t believe her luck, especially when Jonah Nicholls started dating them too.
Penny Panzarella was more than the materialistic party girl everyone at Graham School thought she was, and she was willing to share all her secrets with Fatima Ro to prove it.
Told as a series of interviews, diary entries, and even pages from the book within the book, this gripping tale of a fictional scandal will have you on the edge of your seat from start to finish.
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18. if you’re out there by katy loutzenhiser
See Also: 25 Books About the Sun: Bright Choices for Kids Ages 4-10
After Zan’s best friend moves to California, she is bewildered and crushed when Priya suddenly turns into a ghost. Worse still, Priya’s social media has turned into a stream of ungrammatical posts recounting a joyous, bland new life that’s nothing like her.
It’s only when he meets Logan, the hot new guy in Spanish class, that Zan begins to talk about his sadness, his insecurity, and his sense of utter betrayal. And he’s just as willing as she is to get involved in the investigation when everyone else thinks her suspicions are crazy.
then, a hidden clue in priya’s latest selfie presents a new and deeply disturbing possibility:
maybe priya isn’t just not responding to zan’s emails. maybe she can’t.
- buy it if you’re already out there!
19. a study in charlotte by brittany cavallaro
Jamie Watson has always been intrigued by Charlotte Holmes; after all, their great-great-great-grandfathers are one of the most infamous pairs in history. But the Holmes family has always been odd, and Charlotte is no exception. She’s inherited Sherlock’s volatility and some of his vices—and when Jamie and Charlotte end up at the same Connecticut boarding school, Charlotte makes it clear she’s not looking for friends.
But when a student they both have a history with dies under suspicious circumstances, straight out of the scariest of Sherlock Holmes stories, Jamie can no longer afford to keep her distance. the danger is increasing and no place is safe, and the only people they can trust are themselves.
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20. missing, presumed dead by emma berquist
When eighteen-year-old Lexi foresees the brutal murder of a young woman outside a club in downtown L.A., she is powerless to stop it.
But then the girl’s ghost appears, seeking revenge, and Lexi finds herself swept up in a dangerous quest that could put her squarely in the path of a serial killer. From the author of Devils to Dust, this fast-paced literary thriller will haunt fans of the truly devious Maureen Johnson and Karen M. one of us from mcmanus is lying.
with a touch, lexi can sense how and when someone will die. some say it is a gift. But for Lexi, it’s a curse, one that keeps her alone and friendless. All that changes when Lexi foresees the violent death of a young woman, Jane, outside a club.
jane does not go to the afterlife in silence. His ghost stays behind, determined to hunt down his killer, and he needs Lexi’s help. In life, Jane was everything Lexi is not: outgoing, happy, popular. But in death, all Jane wants is revenge.
lexi will do anything to help jane, to make up for the fact that she couldn’t save jane’s life, and to keep this beautiful ghost of a girl by her side for as long as possible.
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21. daughter of the burning city of amanda foody
Sixteen-year-old Sorina has spent most of her life within the smoldering borders of the Gomorrah Festival. Yet even among the many unusual members of the traveling circus-city, Sorina stands apart as the only illusion-worker born in hundreds of years. This rare talent allows her to create illusions that others can see, feel and touch, with personalities all their own. Her creations are her family, and together they make up the cast of the Festival’s Freak Show.
but no matter how realistic they seem, their illusions are still just that: illusions, and not truly real. Or so she always believed… until one of them is killed.
Desperate to protect her family, Sorina must track down the culprit and determine how a person who doesn’t really exist was killed. Her search for answers leads her to self-proclaimed gossip Luca. her investigation sends them through a haze of political turmoil and forbidden romance, into the darkest corners of the festival. But as the killer continues to kill Sorina’s illusions one by one, she must unravel the horrible truth before everyone she loves is gone.
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22. the lost season of gillian french
Whenever another kid goes missing in October, the kids in the old factory town of Pender know what is really behind it: a monster out in the marshes that they call the Mumbler.
that’s what clara’s new team tells her when she moves to town. Bree and Sage, who take her under their wing. Energetic Trace, who has taken the lead in this year’s Halloween prank war. and the magnetic Kincaid, whose carefree attitude and air of mystery are impossible for Clara to resist.
clara doesn’t really believe in the gossip, not like kinkaid does. But as Halloween approaches and tensions rise in the city, it’s hard to shake the feeling that there really is something dark and dangerous afoot. lurking in the shadows. waiting to bring the stories to life.
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23. dead girls detective agency by suzy cox
What would you do if you had to solve your own murder to get anywhere in death?
perhaps if I hadn’t slept through my alarm, bumped into my high school’s reigning bad girl kristin, or stepped in a puddle, destroying my mom’s new suede dvf boots (which I borrowed without asking), no I would have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I wouldn’t have been pushed in front of that oncoming train. but I did, and I was.
When I came to, a group of girls informed me that she was dead. and that because I died under mysterious circumstances, I can’t go directly to the other side. But at least I’m not alone.
Meet the Dead Girls Detective Agency: Nancy, Lorna, and Tess, not to mention Edison, the really cute if slightly hostile Dead Boy. apparently the only way out of this limbo is to find out who killed me, or i’ll have to spend eternity playing nancy drew. considering I was pretty much invisible in life, who could hate me enough to want me dead?
What if my killer is someone I never would have suspected?
- buy dead girls detective agency now!
24. all the things we do in the dark by saundra mitchell
Something happened to Ava. The curving scar on her face is proof. Ava would rather keep that something hidden—buried deep in her heart and her soul.
But in the woods on the outskirts of town, traces of someone else’s secrets lie frozen, awaiting Ava’s discovery, and what Ava finds threatens to tear down the carefully constructed wall of normalcy she’s spent years building. around you.
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Secrets leave scars. but when the secret in question is not yours, do you ignore the truth and walk away? Or do you pull him out of the shallow grave of him and let him reopen old wounds, wounds that have finally begun to heal?
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25. broken things by lauren oliver
Five years have passed since the Summermarks were brutally murdered in the forest.
everyone thinks mia and brynn killed their best friend. that, driven by their obsession with a novel called the road to falling in love, the three girls had imagined themselves in the magical world where their fantasies turned twisted, even deadly.
the only thing is that they didn’t.
On the anniversary of Summer’s death, a seemingly insignificant discovery resurrects the mystery and brings Mia and Brynn back together. But as the lines between past and present and fiction and reality begin to blur, the girls must confront what really happened in the woods all those years ago, no matter how monstrous.
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26. stalking jack the ripper by kerri maniscolco
Seventeen-year-old audrey rose wadsworth was born the daughter of a lord, with a life of wealth and privilege ahead of her. But between social teas and silk fittings, she leads a forbidden secret life.
Despite her father’s harsh wishes and society’s expectations, Audrey often sneaks away to her uncle’s laboratory to study the gruesome practice of forensic medicine. When her work on a series of savagely murdered corpses drags Audrey into a serial killer investigation, her search for answers brings her closer to her own sheltered world.
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See Also: The 100 Best American Revolution Books of All Time – Journal of the American Revolution