Seventeen-year-old Charlie Davis, a white girl living on the margins, thinks she has little reason to live: her father drowned himself her bereft and abusive mother kicked her out her best friend, Ellis, is nearly brain dead after cutting too deeply and she's gone through unspeakable experiences living on the street. 12+)Īfter surviving a suicide attempt, a fragile teen isn't sure she can endure without cutting herself. Teenage mystery aficionados will love it. With believable characters caught in a web of violence and intrigue, Nixon is nearly at the top of her form in this smoothly knit novel. Gillian has been investigating? When Lana Jean, too, is murdered, Katie realizes everyone's in danger-and also that Lana Jean's journal (in which Travis is now very interested) may contain a crucial clue. Is this related to the violence at the Gillians' home-or to illegal toxic waste disposal by the town's major employer, which Mrs. Next morning, a carnival worker is found murdered. When Katie and Lana Jean go to a carnival, Lana, obviously shadowing Travis once again, disappears. Meanwhile, the Gillians are plagued by a series of attacks on their house and a burglary.

Katie's resentful she misses her beloved ballet lessons and, at her new school, she's assigned to help Lana Jean improve her English-class journal, which is as strange as the girl herself: it's an account of the activities of Travis, a hunk with whom Lana Jean is infatuated. Katie Gillian and her journalist mother have moved from Houston to a small coastal Texas town so that Mom can write a novel in peace.

Caught in the Act by Joan Lowery Nixon