Have You Seen Dawn? — Steven Saylor

Menace stalks the sleepy streets of Amethyst, Texas, in acclaimed mystery writer Steven Saylor's chilling novel of a young woman who goes home for a visit and becomes enmeshed in the search for a missing teenage girl. Menace turns to fear when layers of secrets and mistrust are peeled back to reveal a darkness deeper and more terrifying than anything the young visitor could ever have imagined.

Duty and love of her wheelchair-bound grandmother compel Rue Dunwitty to travel from her new home in San Francisco back to the quiet little Texas town where she was raised.

For Rue, arriving in Amethyst evokes the cozy comfort of returning to a safe haven where everyone knows her name and nothing ever seems to change. Then, in the window of the local grocery store, she sees a sign with a picture of a teenage girl and the question, "Have you seen Dawn?" Rue's bittersweet nostalgia is abruptly replaced by a growing sense of dread.

Dawn is the daughter of a single mother who recently moved to town. When Rue encounters Dawn's twin brother, she is disconcerted by his precocious, brooding intensity. Also unnerving is the change that seems to have come over Rue's old friends. Have they simply grown apart, or is there something more sinister at play?

Then, late at night, Rue sees a strange light in the field outside her grandmother's house, moving across the abandoned farm that once had been home to her father, from whom she is now estranged.

In short order, Rue finds herself confounded by a series of disturbing discoveries -- about the husband of her best friend from high school days; about the intentions of the town's handsome deputy sheriff; about her father, who moved away from Amethyst years ago but may have secretly returned; about her brother, who lives in Austin, but who seems to have taken a leave from both his job and his marriage; and about her boyfriend from San Francisco, who suddenly shows up in town and who seems not to be a stranger there.