Beth is dead / Katie Bernet.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A New York Times and USA TODAY Bestseller!
Sunnie Reads' Inaugural Book Club Pick--Sunnie Select!
Four starred reviews!

Beth March's sisters will stop at nothing to track down her killer--until they begin to suspect each other--in this "brilliantly snappy . . . electrifying" ( Publishers Weekly , starred review) debut thriller that's also a bold, contemporary reimagining of the beloved classic Little Women.

When Beth March is found dead in the woods on New Year's Day, her sisters vow to uncover her murderer.

Suspects abound. There's the neighbor who has feelings for not one but two of the girls. Meg's manipulative best friend. Amy's flirtatious mentor. And Beth's lionhearted first love. But it doesn't take the surviving sisters much digging to uncover motives each one of the March girls had for doing the unthinkable.

Jo, an aspiring author with a huge following on social media, would do anything to hook readers. Would she kill her sister for the story? Amy dreams of studying art in Europe, but she'll need money from her aunt--money that's always been earmarked for Beth. And Meg wouldn't dream of hurting her sister...but her boyfriend might have, and she'll protect him at all costs.

Despite the growing suspicion within the family, it's hard to know for sure if the crime was committed by someone close to home. After all, the March sisters were dragged into the spotlight months ago when their father published a controversial bestseller about his own daughters. Beth could have been killed by anyone.

Beth's perspective told in flashback unfolds next to Meg, Jo, and Amy's increasingly fraught investigation as the tragedy threatens to rip the Marches apart.

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

Chapter One: Jo: (Now)CHAPTER ONE Jo (NOW) On the first morning of a new year, Beth is not in her bed. From the hallway, I peer into her room, and my heart moves to my throat. Sunlight falls on her pillow, dust suspended in the air. Beth should be here, tucked under her quilt, chest rising and falling, but there's only a dent in her mattress. I stand on tiptoe and sigh a little breath of relief. Amy's not here either, the top bunk unmade, blankets in a heap. She's younger than Beth by about two years and ten thousand brain cells, but I feel better knowing they're together. This isn't the first time Amy's spent the entire night at Sallie Gardiner's annual New Year's Eve party. Last year she passed out in Sallie's claw-foot tub--wouldn't it be nice to have a claw-foot tub?--until Mom showed up the next morning and dragged her to the car. Embarrassing, to say the least. It's hard to believe she'd do it again after the way Mom worried, but that's Amy. I text her, and her alone, because I know this isn't Beth's fault. Where are you??? Three dots appear, but after a second of rippling, they stop. I swear, if Mom wakes up to these empty bunks, I'll wrestle Amy to the ground. Mom doesn't deserve that kind of stress, especially not after a New Year's Eve night shift at the hospital--stomachs pumped, fingers blown off by misfired fireworks. I text Amy again. If you're not home before Mom's up... I leave it at that, an open threat, and return to my room to keep working on my manuscript. I meant to stay up all night, but I've been crashing lately, snoring on my desk when I can't keep my eyes open any longer. I don't believe in writer's block--my creativity is a constant, unstoppable force--but right now my thoughts are moving like wet concrete. I open my notebook to the page that acted as my pillow last night. It's smudged, but I can still make out the last of my scribbles. I need a better idea. Something good enough to convince my editor that she didn't make a mistake by offering me a book deal. I rev myself up to start working again, when the back staircase creaks. At once I jump up from my desk, a rush of relief. "Okay, next time you two want to pull an all-nighter, maybe you can shoot me a--" Amy stares back at me, hunched and alone. At fifteen, she's still flat-chested and skinny, with blond hair cut to her shoulders and streaked pink. "Keep it down," she whispers. "Where's--" "Seriously, shut up. Mom's door is wide open." She eases up the final step and sheds her coat, revealing the skintight dress she wore last night. As she enters the bunk room, she furrows her brow. "Where's Beth?" I cross the hallway, a bite in my voice. "You tell me." Amy looks stunned, slow to process. "She's not home?" "Does it look like she's home?" "Shit," she exhales. "Mom's going to kill me." I picture our doe-eyed sister alone at Sallie's party, passed out on one of the Gardiners' leather couches, too drunk to drive--or even walk--home. "You're worried about Mom? What about Beth?" Amy whips out her phone to call our sister, but it goes straight to voicemail. "I'll try Sallie. She was with Beth when I left last night." "Last night? You left last night ?" Amy grips her phone between her shoulder and her ear so she can search a pile of clothes that has gathered on the floor. I duck to interrupt. "Where the hell did you go?" "I stayed with..." She pauses, and I can't tell if she's listening to Sallie's voicemail message or searching for an answer. "Florence. Yeah, I stayed with Florence." I look at her sideways. Amy and our cousin, Florence, are a matching set. Both of them blond, attached at the hip, but if they'd left the party together, they would've crashed here. Florence lives in a house with rules. Not the kind of rules that Mom enforces--be thoughtful, clean up after yourself--but the tightfisted kind that make you want to break things. Strict curfew, no makeup, no dating until college. "You went to Aunt Mary's after midnight?" "We snuck in," says Amy, but her cheeks flush pink. "And you left Beth alone?" She finds a hoodie, tugs it over her head. "She's my big sister. I'm not her babysitter." "She doesn't party like you do." "What's that supposed to mean?" Amy knows good and well what it means. Beth doesn't take stupid risks the way she does. Doesn't ruin things the way she does. Beth wouldn't stay out all night unless something happened--especially now. In just a few short days, she leaves for boarding school, and she has a million things to do before we send her off. "Come on," I say. "Let's go find her." "No." Amy beats me to my keys, holds them behind her back. "We'll wake Mom." She's not wrong. My army-green Jeep has an old, grimy engine that sometimes takes three, four rattling tries to get going. "You expect me to walk?" I ask. "The Gardiners' house isn't that far." I glance back at my writing, a mess of half-baked ideas. This excursion will waste twenty minutes at the very least, but I'm the oldest sister now. That's what Meg said when she went to college. Distractions come with the territory. "Fine," I huff. "But we're taking the shortcut." Amy hates taking the shortcut from our neighborhood to Sallie's, up a steep bridge and through the park. I think it reminds her of Dad, who's been away for six months and thirteen days (not that anyone's counting). When we were little, he'd take us to the park to stargaze, and I'll admit, it hurts to remember those moments--but the park's our quickest shortcut by at least a mile. Amy storms ahead of me, leads me into the cold. When the wind blows, she tightens her arms across her chest, but her teeth chatter like her body's too exhausted to keep warm. Like she didn't rest at all last night. As we trudge toward the end of the block, Laurie's house looms overhead. He's the only kid in town who lives in a modern home instead of an old colonial, the result of his grandmother having just enough money and influence to sway the historical society into allowing her to build new. His room looks dark, and I figure he must be sleeping. He and I have forgone Sallie's party since we met there freshman year, because both of us hate that sort of thing, but he usually stays up well past midnight toasting the New Year with his grandmother. "She's the best company," he always says. Out of nowhere, Amy stops and we collide. My voice comes out on a forced exhale. "What're you--" "Jo." She gazes into the distance, squatting for a better view up the street. "What is that?" I shove past her, less than amused. "I know you hate the shortcut, but this is getting a little--" "Jo, wait." She tugs my coat hard and stares at the hill next to Laurie's house, a steep luge of rocks and tree roots. "I thought I saw..." Without warning, she charges ahead, tearing through brush and snow. "Amy!" I yell. But she keeps going, forging up the hill beside the bridge. "Amy, stop!" She ventures into the trees, takes an uncharted path up the steepest rocks. "You're going to fall," I say. She stops at the base of an old gnarly tree, and her phone slips from her hand, her knees bending ever so slightly, as if the earth is shifting beneath her. I draw a shaky breath. "Come down from there." But just then she lets out a sound that I'll never forget as long as I live. Her voice breaks from her chest, brittle and crumbling. "Beth?" That single syllable echoes down the street, and all other sound falls away. Snow clings to the air for a moment, unmoving. Amy screams. "Jo!" She grips her knees, shuddering. "Jo!" Without a thought, I run, and unlike Amy, I don't stop, only slow. The sight at the base of the tree is so unimaginable that I'm pulled toward it. At first it's like a poem that doesn't make sense until you've read it a few times. Beth is lying in the snow. And the snow is red. And the red isn't just pooled around her but seeping from her. And her eyes are open, but behind them, she's gone. Excerpted from Beth Is Dead by Katie Bernet All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

One need not be familiar with Louisa May Alcott's work to appreciate debut author Bernet's brilliantly snappy contemporary riff on Little Women, which centers high school senior Jo March and her siblings--15-year-old Amy and Harvard freshman Meg--as they investigate the violent murder of their 17-year-old sister Beth. On New Year's Day in Concord, Mass., shortly after their father abandons the family to focus on his writing and the day before Beth starts at Plumfield School for the Arts, Jo and Amy discover Beth's corpse in the snow atop a hill a stone's throw away from their friend Laurie's house. Though suspicions about Laurie's potential involvement abound--according to Amy, she left Beth with Laurie at a party the night before--Jo doggedly dives headfirst into an all-hands-on-deck-scale investigation. Alternating "Then" and "Now" chapters shift between Beth and the three surviving sisters' distinctive voices, filling in events and backstories, fleshing out personalities and possible motives, and injecting suspense and true crime podcast energy into the ensuing inquiry. As Jo digs up unseemly secrets, romantic tension and love triangles add to the enticing drama. The cozy domesticity of the inspiration material is apparent throughout, and the girls' closely held--sometimes conflicting--desires and ambitions both honor Alcott's vision and add fuel to the fire of this electrifying whodunit. The sisters cue as white; Laurie has dark brown skin. Ages 12--up. Agent: Sara Crowe, Sara Crowe Literary. (Jan.)

School Library Journal Review

Gr 7 Up--A delightful reboot of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. Told in then and now chapters, alternating among the four March sisters, this modern reimagining spins the original in a new direction: what if Beth didn't just die? What if Beth was murdered? As the story opens, Dad has violated the four girls' privacy by writing a book about them, and they are furious. His story has really gotten traction--they now have a viral following, and even Teen Vogue is looking for an interview. Fingers are quickly pointing as it's soon revealed that Beth really is dead. The characters are richly recreated, and even many of the secondary characters mirror the original work. The romance and intrigue are timeless. The cast is presumed white. This story stands on its own, but readers may find themselves lured to pursue the original. VERDICT A clever reboot, well imagined and well executed.--Leah Krippner

Booklist Review

After the March sisters are made famous by Little Women, a semi-truthful novel their father wrote about their lives, the story becomes horrifyingly true when Beth is found dead on New Year's Day. In alternating timelines and rotating perspectives, the March sisters explore their relationships with one another and other familiar characters as they try to determine who is responsible for Beth's untimely demise. While the murder mystery of this debut is ultimately secondary to subplots and themes that arise as a result of the girls' investigations, this is ripe with discussion opportunities both for fans of Louisa May Alcott's original work and for teen mystery lovers. Bernet adeptly preserves the classic heartfelt and feminist atmosphere familiar to and beloved by the original's Alcott readers, while offering a grounded modern setting that further brings each character to life. Sisterhood remains the core of the March girls' lives in Concord, even as it is threatened by their suspicion of each other. Recommended for most contemporary teen collections.

Kirkus Book Review

High school junior Beth March is dead, but not from the effects of scarlet fever. Instead, at the start of this modernLittle Women--inspired novel set in Concord, Massachusetts, the "doe-eyed" Beth appears to have been murdered. Everyone is a suspect (until they aren't) in this twist-filled tale told from the perspective of each of the white-presenting March sisters: Meg, a Harvard student; Jo, a writer with big aspirations; misunderstood high school sophomore Amy; and even gentle, musically gifted Beth herself. Fans of the Louisa May Alcott original will appreciate the presence of supporting cast members like Sallie Gardiner and the Hummels even as they wonder which of the characters they know well is capable of homicide--including the March sisters' bestselling author father, who's cancelled for his tell-all coming-of-age novel about them and goes into hiding. The book thoroughly explores the characters' possible motives, from jealousy to the quest for fame. In addition to the four narrators, the story moves between the past and present in shifts that could be dizzying, but debut author Bernet makes it work. She does a masterful job of preserving the distinct personalities and ambitions of the classic characters, transporting them to a contemporary setting and making them fresh and relevant for today's readers. Even teens who don't knowLittle Women will be engaged by this fast-paced and suspense-filled page turner. A thrilling take on a beloved story that will keep readers riveted.(Thriller. 12-18) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.