The Velvet Knife

Return to the world of Truly Devious as Stevie Bell and her friends travel to New York to solve a murder in the next standalone mystery from New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson.

Stevie might be the greatest teenage detective Ellingham Academy and the world has ever seen, but even she can't figure out what happened with her boyfriend, David. What she needs is a distraction: a good old-fashioned murder. Stevie is much happier dealing with dead people. They're a lot less confusing--they don't send cryptic texts and make out with other girls in British pubs.

But then Stevie gets exactly what she wanted when a dead body turns up in the middle of a Manhattan apartment complex, and this one is . . . complicated. Caught in a web of messy alive-people feelings, Stevie finds herself questioning all human connection. Is magnetism only manipulation? Can you trust anyone? Does anyone realize that they're joining a cult--before it's too late? And are things with David really over?

Read all the Stevie Bell Books:

• Truly Devious
• The Vanishing Stair
• The Hand on the Wall
• The Box in the Woods (standalone)
• Nine Liars (standalone)

Maureen Johnson is the #1 New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of nineteen young adult novels, including the Truly Devious series, the Shades of London series, Suite Scarlett, and 13 Little Blue Envelopes. Her collaborative books include Ghosts of the Shadow Market (with Cassandra Clare), Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village (illustrated by Jay Cooper), as well as Let It Snow (with John Green and Lauren Myracle), which was also a hit feature film on Netflix. Her books have sold more than three million copies worldwide and have been published in more than thirty countries. She has been nominated for two Edgar Awards, a Bram Stoker Award, a Nebula Award, was a World Book Day author in the UK in 2014, and has been nominated for or won dozens of YALSA, state library, media and readers' choice awards. She lives in New York City.