Heather Seggel

The victim of a childhood kidnapping that made international headlines, Kate Hildebrand was already famous when she came to stay with her grandfather, a former silent film star, in his Hollywood mansion. An aspiring astronomer, Kate expects a warm welcome from her grandfather, but instead she walks in on a crime scene. As Kate acclimates to her new life in 1938 Hollywood, a challenging job and a burgeoning romance, there’s also a killer to track down. A girl could get blisters doing all that in heels! 

Chasing Starlight is full of golden-age Hollywood glamour but spotlights the sweat and sacrifice that make it all happen. Teri Bailey Black juggles multiple storylines with the same efficiency Kate uses to land a gig as a production assistant. The misfits who rent rooms from Kate’s grandfather are distinct and mostly lovable. Black organically incorporates mentions of the Hays Code, which required strict moral standards in movies during this era, while exploring women’s roles in film and the industry’s history of persecution and blacklisting of communists. It all plays out as if on a movie set, giving things a delightfully meta kick. 

The book’s disparate strands entwine in a conclusion straight out of film noir, complete with speeding roadsters, a complicated switcheroo, a race to find the killer and an overdue reckoning with old family trauma. When you spend your days creating things that aren’t real, it’s doubly important to find the solid ground of truth beneath your feet. 

Chasing Starlight reminds us that there are truths overhead in the night sky, too, and it lets both kinds shine. It’s a fast-paced crime story that nods knowingly at cinematic tropes even as it employs them, and it tugs at the heartstrings just the same.

Pippa Fitz-Amobi’s senior project is ambitious and risky. She wants to research the crime that rocked her small town five years ago, a crime from which the community still hasn’t completely recovered. When Andie Bell disappeared, suspicion fell on Sal Singh. His death by suicide seemed to close the case, but Sal’s family—and Pippa—never doubted his innocence. Revisiting it all will be painful, and there’s no guarantee of what she’ll find. This is A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.

Debut author Holly Jackson gives readers a stake in the investigation, as the story unfolds in a mix of narrative chapters interspersed with interviews and case documents. By the time Pippa makes a wall chart with red string to connect potential leads, we’re right there with her, trying to figure out what really happened. Pippa reaches out to Sal’s brother, Ravi, and he quickly gets involved in the search for the truth. His family members have been treated like pariahs since Andie’s disappearance, and he wants to not only clear his brother’s name but also wake people up to their cruelty.

The mix of case files and crime story keeps the plot moving at a steady clip, but there’s quality time spent with Pippa’s friends and family as well. When she begins to get notes warning her away from the investigation, she’s eager to protect the people close to her, but also worried that one of them may be trying to throw her off the trail. 

Fans of true crime will be hooked by the hunt for a killer, but there’s more to this Guide than just a whodunit. It’s a story of families, community and the ways a crisis can turn them against one another in the blink of an eye.

Rico Danger has a name straight out of an explosive action movie, but her life is hurtling off a cliff in ways that are all too ordinary. Overstretched at her job at a gas station to try and keep a roof over her family’s heads, she’s perpetually one crisis away from the edge. The “good” school her mom insists she attend is unlikely to lead to college afterward, and friends are in short supply because she’s hard-wired to keep people at arm’s length. So when a customer at the gas station buys what might be a winning lottery ticket, it sets a whole new life in motion for Rico. But is a Jackpot really the answer to all her problems?

Nic Stone (Dear Martin) structures Jackpot like a romance with a twist of mystery—Rico enlists rich kid Zan to help her track down the ticket holder, and their shared quest leads to mutual attraction—but it has so much more going on underneath its surface. Although Rico’s circumstances are difficult, her attitude doesn’t help; she isolates potential allies by assuming the worst about them as a defense mechanism. Stone writes some chapters from the perspectives of inanimate objects (the winning ticket, a wood stove, some high thread count sheets, etc.), which offers a glimpse beyond Rico’s tight focus and also adds some surreal charm.

When a medical crisis sends her family into deeper debt than they could have imagined, Rico throws her already flexible morals aside and makes a risky final attempt to get the winning ticket, but fate has a twist in store. There’s a happy ending of sorts, but it’s not one readers will see coming.

Jackpot is a high school romance (senior prom receives its due) and also a kind of fairy tale (for all her complaining about thrift-store clothes, Rico still manages to end up in the perfect dress for any occasion). But Jackpot tells other stories, too, about how we judge one another based on race and class, and the ways those most in need sometimes cut themselves off from help that’s hiding in plain sight.