THE BAD ONES

Over the course of a single winter's night, four people go missing from the suburb of Palmetto, Illinois: three high school students and a teacher, with no other link apparent among them.

One of the lost is Nora Powell's enigmatic photographer best friend, Becca, who vanishes just days after the two lifelong friends have a transformative fight. As Nora tries to untangle the truth of Becca's disappearancewhether she left or was taken, what connection she might share with the other missing peopleshe begins to see glimmerings of her hometown's shadow history, and its elusive attachment to the vanishings. Nora uncovers dark events in her high school's past and finds herself increasingly haunted by a piece of local lore: a goddess folk figure of forgotten origins, who played an eerie role in Nora and Becca's own childhood games.

With each discovery Nora makes about the vanished four and her suburb's secrets, she becomes increasingly aware her best friend was hiding far more than she realized. She must dig deep to discover whether Becca is perpetrator or victim, and to elucidate the mystery of the goddess, a desperate and dangerous creation born out of female rage. But there are other forces at work in Palmetto, intent on making their own discoveries, and willing to protect or destroy the legacy of the goddess at any cost.

Melissa Albert is the author of the New York Times bestselling Hazel Wood series and her work has been translated into more than twenty languages. Her most recent novel was Our Crooked Hearts, Amazon's #1 YA Book of 2022. She's from Illinois and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son.