The Secrets of Stone Creek

The Hardy Boys meets We Dream of Space in this tender middle grade adventure about a girl with the heart of an explorer who discovers more than she bargained for with her two brothers over the course of one fateful week.

Finley Walsh and her best friend Sophie were adventurers, like the ones they grew up reading about in 100 of the World’s Greatest Female Adventurers—that is, until Sophie found new friends. Between losing her best friend and feeling overlooked by her mother and older brother, Finley is determined to prove herself by becoming a great adventurer like the ones in her book.

The perfect opportunity comes when she and her brothers stay with an estranged relative in Stone Creek, a remote tourist town dedicated to the legend of a local adventurer who went missing two decades before. Finley knows that if she finds the missing woman, she’ll not only be able to prove herself to Sophie and her family, but also be able to meet a real, live adventurer just like her.

Finley convinces her brothers to join her in her rescue mission. But as they delve deeper into Stone Creek’s painful past, it becomes harder to know who they can trust—including each other—and they realize some places are better left unexplored.

Briana McDonald’s fiction has appeared in Rozyln: Short Fiction by Women Writers, Marathon Literary Review, The Stonecoast Review, and more. She is a book reviewer at The Literary Review and a reader for CLMP’s Firecracker Awards. She is an academic advisor at Columbia University. She is the author of Pepper’s Rules for Secret Sleuthing and The Secrets of Stone Creek. Find out more at BrianaRoseMcDonald.com.