Stigmata

Beatrix Gurian's YA thriller "Stigmata: Nichts bleibt verborgen" opens shortly after Emma's mother dies, when Emma receives an old black-and-white photograph of a small child from an unknown sender — along with a mysterious instruction to track down her mother's killers. The trail leads her to a remote castle in the mountains, where a youth camp is about to begin.

Told across multiple narrative strands — two from Emma's first-person perspective, a third recounting events at a church children's home in the past — the novel builds its mystery around a series of unsettling vintage photographs that recur throughout the story. The result is an atmospheric, multi-threaded thriller about a hidden crime finally coming to light.