April Henry books

Claire Montrose Reading Order

Girl, Stolen Reading Order

Point Last Seen Reading Order

Standalone Novels

Triple Threat Reading Order

April Henry began her career with the adult Claire Montrose mystery series in the late 1990s, but she found her main audience writing thrillers for teenagers. Her YA novels tend to put young protagonists in life-or-death situations with little room for hesitation: a blind girl who wakes up in the back of a stolen car, a girl who comes to in the woods with no memory of who she is, teenagers who stumble onto bodies during search and rescue training. The plots move fast and the stakes are real.

Henry has also written collaborative fiction. The Triple Threat series, written with Lis Wiehl, follows a TV reporter, a prosecutor, and an FBI agent working on high-profile cases. It is aimed at adult readers and has a different tone from her solo YA work. Her Point Last Seen books, about teen volunteers in search and rescue, draw on her own experience with the sport.

She has published steadily, with new standalone YA thrillers appearing almost every year through the 2010s and into the 2020s. Her books are set in the Pacific Northwest and often deal with themes of survival, identity, and crime.