The Mystery of Hollow Places

The Mystery of Hollow Places is a gorgeously written, stunningly original novel of love, loss, and identity, from debut author Rebecca Podos.

All Imogene Scott knows of her mother is the bedtime story her father told her as a child. It’s the story of how her parents met: he, a forensic pathologist; she, a mysterious woman who came to identify a body. A woman who left Imogene and her father when she was a baby, a woman who was always possessed of a powerful loneliness, a woman who many referred to as “troubled waters.”

Now Imogene is seventeen, and her father, a famous author of medical mysteries, has struck out in the middle of the night and hasn’t come back. Neither Imogene’s stepmother nor the police know where he could’ve gone, but Imogene is convinced he’s looking for her mother. And she decides it’s up to her to put to use the skills she’s gleaned from a lifetime of reading her father’s books to track down a woman she’s only known in stories in order to find him and, perhaps, the answer to the question she’s carried with her for her entire life.

• Missing Parent: When Imogene’s father—a famous author of medical mysteries—vanishes in the night, she’s the only one who suspects where he’s gone.
• Family Secrets: Her only clue is a strange bedtime story about a mother who left when she was a baby, a woman known only as "troubled waters."
• Teen Sleuth: Using the skills she learned from a lifetime of reading her father’s books, Imogene starts her own investigation when the police have no leads.
• Mother Daughter Relationship: To find her father, she must first track down a mother she’s never known, embarking on a search that will unearth secrets about her family and herself.