Jennie Godfrey invites readers to 1979 Yorkshire, England, in THE LIST OF SUSPICIOUS THINGS. This enchanting, beguiling and tender novel is about a girl adrift in dysfunction who decides that she must unmask the identity of a local serial killer in order to set her life back on track.

Miv lives in a world of contradictions. At 12, she has been deemed too old to enjoy the things she loves, but simultaneously too young to explore the things she’s most curious about. At home, her meals are prepared, her clothes are laundered, and her aunt supplies endless lists of things she should know, remember and care about. But her mother sits alone upstairs, having gone silent due to her depression. At school, her best friend, Sharon, always supports her ideas and curiosities. But at the same time, Sharon has begun to blossom into a beautiful, popular girl, whereas Miv can never quite nail any of her social interactions.

"THE LIST OF SUSPICIOUS THINGS is a big-picture book, but one that takes care and focus to zero in on the most infinitesimal pieces that make up a nation, a village and a girlhood. Imaginative and bighearted, it will be a huge hit with book clubs."

Amidst it all are the ever-present newspaper articles about the Yorkshire Ripper. The murders began only a few years ago and were limited to sex workers and “those kinds of women,” but his most recent victims have been younger and more innocent. With the girls rapidly approaching adolescence, they’ve started to carry themselves and observe the world around them a bit differently.

When we meet Miv, her father and aunt have just dropped a bombshell. Burned out by the care of her mother and stressed over the murders, they are considering relocating to the south. But for Miv, lost in her teenage confusion, a move is the one thing that cannot and must not happen. After all, if her mother has gone a bit mad, her father looks more anxious than ever, and a killer is running loose, her home and best friend stand as her only constants --- the only things that seem unlikely to ever change or destabilize --- and she cannot lose them. Enter the List of Suspicious Things.

With posters and signs everywhere demanding that citizens stay alert and report anything unusual --- particularly swarthy, angry men who may hate women --- Miv gets it in her head that identifying the Ripper and putting an end to his murderous rampage is the only thing that can prevent the move, maintain her friendship with Sharon…and if she happens to become famous and popular in the process, so be it. But the girls misunderstand many things about their changing town.

Once a bustling mill town, Yorkshire’s industrial belt has dried up, leaving men and women unemployed and sick with worry. Margaret Thatcher’s recent election to prime minister --- frowned on by many because of her gender --- is also bringing racism to the forefront of everyday conversation. Meanwhile, immigrants have begun to arrive in Yorkshire, and parents and children alike are a bit too comfortable dealing out slurs or other microaggressions. They even go so far as to boycott the local grocer, Mr. Bashir, for having the audacity to take up an open lease and be brown-skinned. Naturally, Miv and Sharon begin their investigation here.

But instead of a murderous madman, they discover a soft, gentle, widowed man doing his best by his son, Ishtiaq. A classmate of theirs, Ishtiaq is quiet and solemn at school, but boisterous and funny at home. They are shocked by the dichotomy, even more so when they recognize that his facade isn’t a game, but survival. Item one on the list officially has been crossed off, but in a town full of angry, desolate men and insidious strains of aggression trickling down to even the girls’ classmates, the suspects for their list are growing nearly every day.

From Mr. Bashir to their teacher, Mr. Ware (a truly angry man), and even the local librarian and vicar, everyone is suspicious, and no one can ever be fully cleared. But it’s not the list itself that changes Miv and Sharon. It’s what they discover about their neighbors --- both the lifers and the newly arrived, the posh and the poor, the white and the brown --- that sets them on a journey of self-discovery and coming of age. At the same time, their own changing bodies and mindsets propel them on an individual pathway to adulthood, one that does not always allow for easy answers or simple disagreements.

Although Miv is our insightful, precocious and at times heartbreakingly innocent protagonist, Jennie Godfrey also writes chapters from the perspectives of Miv’s father and several suspects, including Mr. Bashir and Mr. Ware. With each voice carefully rendered, each social issue examined through every lens and perspective, and each discovery both micro and macro in scale, the novel is ambitious in scope but intimate in its tenderness. However, this is not just Miv’s story. It is also the story of a country united by its “progressive” female prime minister appointment, yet riven by her xenophobic views and the misogyny of its citizens. Paired together, these morally complex, eye-opening tales of coming of age blend into something far greater than the sum of its parts, a tapestry of a changing country and the young ladies who will inherit it one day, scars and all.

Perfect for fans of THE READING LIST and THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY, THE LIST OF SUSPICIOUS THINGS is a big-picture book, but one that takes care and focus to zero in on the most infinitesimal pieces that make up a nation, a village and a girlhood. Imaginative and bighearted, it will be a huge hit with book clubs.