The link popped up right after I finished helping a client decide on the embossing for her wedding invites. I waited until I finished her order before I checked the text from my mother. She’d already bombarded me with articles about any shooting, break-in, or assault within a 50-mile radius of Jersey City. I had ignored them all.

This one came with a picture of a woman. She looked how I’d wanted to when I was growing up as a black girl in Maryland. Beautiful. Blue-eyed. Strawberry blonde. Her hair casually flung up in knots on both sides of her head. Space buns that I couldn’t get away with, even when I had my hair in braids.

The headline was much more somber: Jersey City Woman Missing.

I didn’t click that link either.

This trip had been planned for a month. There was no way I wasn’t going.

I’d had my mind set since Ty had rolled over on a lazy Sunday morning when my mom would’ve wanted me to be two hours deep into worship service and casually asked if I’d ever been to New York. It’d only been a few months since we met jogging. We were at the “let’s take a trip” stage. Technically, it was a two-week work trip for him. One he took every couple of months to his headquarters in Jersey City. I was just tagging along for a weekend.

The plan was for me to come down Friday evening, then we’d stay in an Airbnb and spend the next two days in New York City before I went back home in time for my own job Monday morning. Of course, my occupation was nowhere near as fancy as his. I was a manager at a stationary store. I’d gotten the job in college. Considering that I hadn’t kept in touch with a single friend from Morgan State—even my childhood bestie Adore—my boss was one of the people who’d known me longest.

I’d like to pretend I was happy to still work there—that I liked dealing with entitled customers and college kids looking to supplement scholarships and student loans. I’d tried to leave once about five years ago for a job at a large athletics company. Even got the job—until the background check came through. Apparently, they weren’t too keen to hire someone with a record—even if I’d only spent a few months in jail.

I never applied for anything else again, just stayed at the stationary store just like I’d stayed in Baltimore.

I’d never been much of a traveler but still I was excited when Ty turned toward me that morning. So excited that I’d even purchased new Kenneth Cole luggage and packed the good panties—even though my mother spent the entire month strongly disagreeing with the trip. That was the great thing about being just over 30—even if I did still live in my college studio apartment. Your mother kept giving advice, you just didn’t have to take it.

My relationship history was mainly made up of a series of first dates. Ty was my first serious boyfriend in over a decade. I was going to enjoy my first couples vacation just like I was going to enjoy my first time ever in New York. Even if my mother wanted to ruin it one text at a time.

Because what could go wrong?

Missing White Woman
Genre: Domestic Thriller
Release: April 2024
Format: Print, Digital, Audio
Purchase Link

The truth is never skin deep.

It was supposed to be a romantic getaway weekend in New York City. Breanna’s new boyfriend, Ty, took care of everything—the train tickets, the dinner reservations, the rented four-story luxury rowhouse in Jersey City with a beautiful view of the Manhattan skyline. But when Bree comes downstairs their final morning, she’s shocked. There’s a stranger laying dead in the foyer, and Ty is nowhere to be found.

A Black woman alone in a new city, Bree is stranded and out of her depth—especially when it becomes clear the dead woman is none other than Janelle Beckett, the missing woman the entire Internet has become obsessed with. There’s only one person Bree can turn to: her ex-best friend, a lawyer with whom she shares a very complicated past. As the police and a social media mob close in, all looking for #JusticeForJanelle, Bree realizes that the only way she can help Ty—or herself—is to figure out what really happened that last night.

But when people only see what they want to see, can she uncover the truth hiding in plain sight?

About the author
Kellye Garrett’s crime fiction novels have been featured on the Today Show, won numerous awards, and named to Time Magazine’s 100 Best Mystery & Thrillers of All Time. After breaking into publishing with the Detective by Day lightweight mystery series, she transitioned into standalone suspense with Like A Sister. Up next is Missing White Woman, a twisty thriller and “compulsive page-turner” (Harlan Coben) about a woman who thinks she’s waking up to a romantic vacation—only to find a body in her rental home and her boyfriend gone. In addition to writing, Kellye is a co-founder of Crime Writers of Color, which received the 2023 Raven Award from MWA. You can learn more about her at kellyegarrett.com.