As the co-authors of The Antiquity Affair, we most love to craft thrilling stories that involve mysteries and puzzles—the twistier, the better! As both a reader and a gamer, Jennifer has always been drawn to stories that combine elements of fiction and gaming, games and books that pull you in and make you a co-adventurer along with the protagonists, an active participant in the plot. Lee grew up devouring choose-your-own-adventure stories (she’d read them several times, purposefully choosing different paths to get a sense of the whole story universe), and the adventures she pens with Jennifer feel like a return to those empowering narratives, the sense that fiction is dynamic, its own type of game.
Two timelines, amazing heroines, a globe-trotting adventure, an ancient powerful chess set sought by goodies and baddies throughout the world for centuries, romance and danger, and self-discovery—it is safe to say this novel was a major influence on our book!
Reading it as a teen, I longed to be brilliant enough to be a player in an international intrigue, but the beauty of books like this is that they make you feel like a participant in your own right. We love a book that sends readers on their own thrilling adventure, and this book fully delivers.
A fantasy novel from the author of A CALCULATED RISK. The secret of the Eight is a puzzle whose solution has challenged the most brilliant minds known to humanity. Catherine Velis is manipulated into using her unrivalled problem-solving skills to find and reassemble to legendary chess set.
We’re clearly suckers for dual timeline books about geniuses solving near-impossible ciphers.
This one, by the dauntingly clever Neal Stephenson, is a heady mix of real history, invented history, and modern intrigue, all tied together by the field of cryptology. I knew absolutely nothing about code-breaking before I read this, and when I’d finished, I felt I’d earned a master's at the very least.
Although we’ll never compete with the Bletchley Park brains, we very much enjoy being thrown into the mix, pretending we can keep up!
With this extraordinary first volume in an epoch-making masterpiece, Neal Stephenson hacks into the secret histories of nations and the private obsessions of men, decrypting with dazzling virtuosity the forces that shaped this century.
In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse—mathematical genius and young Captain in the U.S. Navy—is assigned to detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists, and some of those people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt. The mission of Waterhouse and Detachment 2702—commanded by Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe-is to keep the Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence…
You might not think a picture book could entice and stump adult readers for decades upon decades.
Not only has Masquerade accomplished that, but it fueled a real-life global hunt for a buried treasure—a golden rabbit hidden in a secret location pointed to by clues in the illustrations and text—that lasted over three years. Controversy abounds over whether the winner actually solved the puzzle on his own or happened upon the rabbit by happenstance.
Treasure or not, the book is priceless in its own right, full of hints and mysteries, many of which we still haven’t fully riddled out.
In paperback, the book that touched off the treasure hunt of the century-with a full explanation of the Masquerade Riddle.
For three years, treasure-seekers from both sides of the Atlantic sought a fabulous golden hare buried by artist Kit Williams. Williams had devised an unusual guide to the hare's whereabouts: a multilayered riddle that he told in a fairy tale of his own imagining, and presented in dazzling, cryptic, paintings.
When the hare was finally unearthed by a British engineer, many were left wanting to know exactly how the clues worked out. In this paperback reprint of Masquerade, the author…
While many mysteries feature privileged protagonists, the heroine of Elle Cosimano’s debut YA lives in a trailer park and the clash she feels with her more affluent peers is a poignant thread through this puzzler.
There’s a supernatural element, but it plays second fiddle to Nearly’s real gift—she’s a math and puzzle whiz who can even interpret the clues she finds in mysterious newspaper ads. This thriller kept us guessing until the end. It’s a particularly great backlist gem if, like us, you’re a fan of Cosimano’s Finlay Donovan series.
Bones meets Fringe in a big, dark, scary, brilliantly-plotted urban thriller that will leave you guessing until the very end
Nearly Boswell knows how to keep secrets. Living in a DC trailer park, she knows better than to share anything that would make her a target with her classmates. Like her mother's job as an exotic dancer, her obsession with the personal ads, and especially the emotions she can taste when she brushes against someone's skin. But when a serial killer goes on a killing spree and starts attacking students, leaving cryptic ads in the newspaper that only Nearly can…
Jennifer Lynn Barnes’ The Inheritance Games reads like a YA contemporary version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and we were bewitched.
This book combines so many story elements we love: a mysterious invitation, found family, secrets, and a scrappy, inventive heroine. The setting, the Hawthorne House, is its own character, too, chock full of traps, tunnels, codes, and puzzles to crack. Barnes also balances her mystery beautifully with a romantic subplot—a mix we strove for in our book.
1.5 MILLION COPIES SOLD OF THE #1 BESTSELLING SERIES!
Don't miss this New York Times bestselling "impossible to put down" (Buzzfeed) novel with deadly stakes, thrilling twists, and juicy secrets -- perfect for fans of One of Us is Lying and Knives Out.
Avery Grambs has a plan for a better future: survive high school, win a scholarship, and get out. But her fortunes change in an instant when billionaire Tobias Hawthorne dies and leaves Avery virtually his entire fortune. The catch? Avery has no idea why -- or even who Tobias Hawthorne is.
In The Antiquity Affair, two turn-of-the-20th-century sisters find themselves embroiled in an international hunt for a legendary artifact known as the Serpent’s Crown. To get to the prize before a sinister secret society can use it for their own nefarious purposes, the young women must decode a series of devilishly encrypted hieroglyphic scrolls and follow the clues contained therein to a location that has been hidden from the world for millennia.
I grew up a fan of an evening news segment called “On the Road with Charles Kuralt.” Kuralt spotlighted upbeat, affirmative, sometimes nostalgic stories of people and places he discovered as he traveled across the American landscape. The charming stories he told were only part of the appeal; the freedom and adventure of being on the open road ignited a spark that continues to smolder. Some of my fondest memories from childhood are our annual family road trips, and I still jump at the chance to drive across the country.
Head West in 1865 with two life-long friends looking for adventure and who want to see the wilderness before it disappears. One is a wanderer; the other seeks a home he lost. The people they meet on their journey reflect the diverse events of this time period–settlers, adventure seekers, scientific expeditions, and Indigenous peoples–all of whom shape their lives in significant ways.
This is a story of friendship that casts a different look on a time period which often focuses only on wagon trains or gunslingers.
After four years of adventure in the frontier, Win Avery returns to his hometown on the edge of the prairie and tracks down his childhood friend, Jeb Dawson. Jeb has just lost his parents, and, in his efforts to console him, Win convinces his friend to travel west with him―to see the frontier before it is settled, while it is still unspoiled wilderness.
They embark on a free-spirited adventure, but their journey sidetracks when they befriend Meg Jameson, an accomplished horsewoman, lost on the Nebraska prairie. Traveling together through the Rocky Mountain foothills, they run into Gray Wolf, an Arapaho…
