DARKLY

Seven teens are chosen for a mysterious internship with the Louisiana Veda Foundation, investigating the remnants of board-game empire Darkly and its enigmatic founder.

Arcadia Gannon, 17, who presents white, comes from Eminence, Missouri, is bad at school but good at puzzles, runs her mother’s antiques shop, loves Darkly games, and knows as much as anyone can about Louisiana Veda, the long-dead mastermind behind their (impossible, often terrifying) games. The internship involves being marooned—along with Poe from France, Franz-Luc from Germany, Cooper from the U.S., Torin from Ireland, Everleigh from Iceland, and Mouse from Nigeria—on the island off the coast of England where the Darkly factory is located. They’re tasked with finding a missing boy, who disappeared while playing a never-released game, the sole copy of which was stolen years earlier. The prize: £1,000,000 and complete ownership of a Darkly game of their choice. What follows is a treasure hunt, a mystery both present and past, a sometimes-terrifying adventure, and, for Dia, a coming into her own after a life of being overshadowed by a flighty mother whom she’s had to parent. Like a Darkly game, the whole is mesmerizing, improbable, deeply compelling, and best enjoyed after dark. Pessl’s impeccably controlled prose plays with ideas about presentation and storytelling on a meta level even as Dia grapples with the same ideas (as well as the concepts of destiny and determination) in Veda’s life and her own.

Roll the die, flip the card: We have a winner.