When They Fade

After Tatum reveals that her friend Charlotte is having an affair with a teacher, the entire school turns on Tatum, haranguing her online, defacing her locker, and vandalizing her car. When Tatum picks up a hitchhiker named Molly one night, the teenager leaves her with a warning ("You're going to die. It will hurt and you'll be alone") before vanishing into thin air. In this chilling ghost story, Molly, like the narrator in Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, exists in an in-between state, a stagnant island where the dead wait to "Fade" back into existence for the occasional haunting. The girls' parallel tragedies unravel through snippets of memories, then collide on the same back road in a small Washington State town 40 years apart. The relatively happy ending is a little too tidy given the overall dark tone, but it's certainly well-deserved after the traumas both girls suffer. As Roberts (The Bodies We Wear) traces betrayals and escalating violence in both the present and the past, readers will find Tatum and Molly's journeys hard to forget. Ages 14%E2%80%93up. Agent: Sarah Davies, Greenhouse Literary. (Sept.)