Scott McPhee
Books
The Lost & Found Bureau Mystery
More Works
The Heartline Chronicles
More Works
The Westbrook Mysteries
Every book is set in Westbrook, a small Illinois town that decides it knows the story before anyone has the facts. Each one asks the same question: what is the difference between being sure and being right? The books follow one another over two continuous years, and threads carry across them. Caleb works through sound and June through people and records. Their father is a 911 dispatcher, and their family has its own secrets. Detective Elena Morrow recurs, and the case from Book 1 reaches trial in Book 4. Across the series, Caleb learns that paying attention is not the same as controlling the people he loves. June learns that helping someone doesn't mean deciding for them. By Book 6, Westbrook's story has grown wide enough to welcome a new narrator, with the Mercers at her side.
More Works
The Lantern Cove Mysteries
Every book is set in Lantern Cove: the Clockworks tower and its Tideheart bell, the dark lighthouse on Gull Point, the Black Maw reef, Blackwater Marsh, and the Tattler office behind the harbor records building. Every mystery turns on the tides, and every one is solved with records, not rumors. Three young investigators carry the series. Rory Pim, the town's Junior Chronicler, writes down every "occurrence" before she knows whether it matters. Piper Okonkwo, editor of the Tattler, learns that a story can be true before it is ready to print. Elias Frost trusts tide charts, blueprints and numbers. Each book closes with a new entry in Rory's occurrence log, and that entry opens the next case. As the series widens, newcomers Maya Torres and Theo Calder bring their own ways of seeing, with Rory, Piper and Elias at their side. In every book the town already has a story it believes, the first answer is wrong, and the kids have to check what really happened.
About
Scott McPhee spent more than five decades as an occupational therapy university professor and dean. He wrote nonfiction and scholarly articles before retirement gave him the chance to follow a different kind of curiosity: fiction. His middle-grade fantasy series are The Heartline Chronicles and The Lost & Found Bureau Mysteries. His young adult series, The Westbrook Mysteries, follows a brother and sister in a small town where everyone thinks they know the story. His books share a belief that young readers can handle big questions, like what it means to really listen and the difference between being sure and being right.
Read the full bio