Six Days in July: A YA Small-Town Mystery Thriller

By Jaymes Mercer

My town threw its biggest party of the year the week my best friend disappeared.

Nobody canceled the fireworks. Nobody canceled the parade. In Hollow Bend, the Fourth of July has never missed - not for the Depression, not for the flood, and not for a seventeen-year-old girl who stopped answering her phone.

Nora Kessler knows her best friend didn't run away. Sadie Lennox never missed a shift at the slushie window, never left her wallet behind, and never - not once in seventeen years - planned to miss the fireworks. But the county typed four words into a file - no indicators of foul play - and the whole town exhaled.

Then Nora starts asking questions, and the town starts answering. Politely. Warmly. Reasonably. With everything except the truth.

The shopkeeper who folds her missing-person flyer into his pocket instead of hanging it. The councilwoman who offers her a chair instead of a search. The bank calling her family's diner at midnight. Every adult in Hollow Bend has a perfectly good reason to wait until after the Fourth - and not one of them has to tell a single lie to say it.

Armed with her best friend's notebook, a stack of homemade flyers, and rules written in a code only partners understand, Nora has six days to find the truth - before a closing date the whole town is protecting, before the festival buries it, and before she becomes the second girl this county refuses to look for.

A must-read for fans of One of Us Is Lying, We Were Liars, and A Good Girl's Guide to Murder:
A ticking-clock mystery told in real time - six days, no skipping ahead
A small town where everyone is a suspect and no one is a villain
Best-friendship, first loyalty, and what staying quiet really costs
A lake that keeps every secret - until it gives one back

Paper doesn't ping. Copy that.

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HJ2L3NLY
• ISBN13: 9798172504037
• Release Date: September 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 306 Pages
• Weight: 0.71 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.5"