Blood in the Water

Twelve-year-old Kaylani would rather spend the summer in Brooklyn honing her detective skills by working to prove her incarcerated father’s innocence than visit family friends the Watsons at their Martha’s Vineyard home. Despite her protests, though, she finds herself traveling to Massachusetts, where she butts heads with her hosts’ snobby granddaughters, Cassie and London. When local teenager Chadwick is found dead near the infamous Jaws bridge, police initially conclude he’d been bitten by a shark. But further investigation suggests that Chadwick’s death was a homicide, prompting Kaylani to begin her own inquiry—after all, it’s the perfect opportunity to sharpen her sleuthing know-how. Suspecting Cassie, who was the last person to see Chadwick alive, Kaylani teams up with the victim’s younger brother Miles to figure out what happened. As she gathers intel, she also uncovers conflict within the community and learns that not everything on Martha’s Vineyard is as glamorous as it appears. In her exhilarating middle grade debut, Jackson (The Weight of Blood) examines class inequity by centering incarcerated parent–child dynamics alongside an affluent Black community from which Kaylani often feels excluded. The protagonist’s whip-smart first-person narration expertly complements the suspenseful murder-mystery plot, while chilling prose, atmospheric storytelling, and rich explorations of the island’s Black history culminate in an accessible and satisfying thriller. Ages 9–12. Agent: Jenny Bent, Bent Agency. (July)