Works by
Jennifer McMahon
(Writer)

Island of Lost Girls (May 2008 release)
One summer day, at a gas station in a small Vermont town, six-year-old Ernestine Florucci is abducted by a person wearing a rabbit suit while her mother is buying lottery tickets. Twenty-three year old Rhonda Farr is the only witness, and she does nothing as she watches the scene unfold – little Ernie goes with the rabbit so casually, confidently getting into the rabbit’s Volkswagen bug, smiling while the rabbit carefully fastens her seatbelt.

The police are skeptical of Rhonda’s story and Ernie’s mother blames her outright. The kidnapping forces Rhonda to face another disappearance, that of her best friend from childhood – Lizzy Shale, whose brother, Peter just so happens to be a prime suspect in Ernie’s abduction.

Unraveling the present mystery plunges Rhonda headlong down the rabbit hole of her past. She must struggle to makes sense of the loss of the two girls, and to ask herself if the Peter she grew up with -- and has secretly loved all her life -- could have a much darker side.

My Tiki Girl (May 2008 release)
Fifteen year old Maggie Keller was once a popular girl, the star of school plays. When a car accident kills her mother and leaves Maggie with a limp, she turns into Freak Frankenstein Girl, who just wants to be left alone.

When the new girl at school, Dahlia Wainwright, asks Maggie to be in her band, Maggie knows right away she's found a kindred spirit. Everyone thinks Dahlia’s a witch and a freak, but Maggie is captivated.

Dahlia's unconventional family soon becomes Maggie's new world -- a world where everyone has an alternate personality, and dolls have the power to control fate. What begins as a peculiar friendship soon develops into something much stronger… and perhaps more dangerous for both girls.

Promise Not to Tell (2007) -- Nominated 2007 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Debut Fiction
Forty-one-year-old school nurse Kate Cypher has returned home to rural Vermont to care for her mother who's afflicted with Alzheimer's. On the night she arrives, a young girl is murdered—a horrific crime that eerily mirrors another from Kate's childhood. Three decades earlier, her dirt-poor friend Del—shunned and derided by classmates as "Potato Girl"—was brutally slain. Del's killer was never found, while the victim has since achieved immortality in local legends and ghost stories. Now, as this new murder investigation draws Kate irresistibly in, her past and present collide in terrifying, unexpected ways. Because nothing is quite what it seems . . . and the grim specters of her youth are far from forgotten.

More than just a murder mystery, Jennifer McMahon's extraordinary debut novel, Promise Not to Tell, is a story of friendship and family, devotion and betrayal—tautly written, deeply insightful, beautifully evocative, and utterly unforgettable.