Who  is  the uninvited? This twisty page-turner from a master of suspense plumbs the unsettling goings-on at a picture-perfect woodland cottage. Mimi Shapiro had a disturbing freshman year at NYU, thanks to a foolish affair with a professor who still haunts her caller ID. So when her artist father, Marc, offers the use of his remote Canadian cottage, she’s glad to hop in her Mini Cooper and drive up north. The house is fairy-tale quaint, and the key is hidden right where her dad said it would be, so she’s shocked to find someone already living there — Jay, a young musician, who is equally startled to meet Mimi and immediately accuses her of leaving strange and threatening tokens inside: a dead bird, a snakeskin, a cricket sound track embedded in his latest composition. But Mimi has just arrived, so who is responsible? And more alarmingly, what does the intruder want? Part gripping thriller, part family drama, this fast-paced novel plays out in alternating viewpoints, in a pastoral setting that is evocative and eerie — a mysterious character in its own right. Grade 9 Up–Mimi Shapiro, film studies major at NYU, leaves her predatory professor lover and escapes to a remote Canadian cottage that belongs to her father, Marc Soto, a prominent artist who walked out on Mimi and her mom years before. She finds the cottage occupied by Jay Page, a music student who is also Marc's progeny by a local woman. Despite knowing nothing of one another, the half-siblings forge a quick bond and investigate a series of odd occurrences at the cottage. They discover a hidey-hole under a trapdoor in the floor with an escape tunnel, raising alarm that escalates after a break-in. The story unfolds in alternating viewpoints between Mimi and local loner Cramer Lee, yet another secret Marc Soto offspring, who lives nearby with his mentally unstable artist mother. Cramer supports her by working two jobs and spends his spare time working out with weights and spying on Jay and Mimi. Despite the thriller premise, the tension tends to be tepid, bogged down by overly picturesque descriptions of surroundings, clothing, and cuisine. Cramer's character is well developed and sympathetic in his pathological shyness and twisted maternal relationship. City girl Mimi enthusiastically takes on rural life and travel by kayak, growing past self-absorption, but Wynne-Jones devotes more space to her possessions than her qualities. Jay remains peculiarly flat for a passionate musician. The complications and improbability of suddenly becoming family thrust upon the three are largely untapped. –Joyce Adams Burner, National Archives at Kansas City, MO Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. After a stormy affair with a professor, NYU student Mimi Shapiro heads to a remote Canadian farmhouse owned by her father, Marc, a famous painter. On arrival in the idyllic riverside setting, though, she finds Jay, a 22-year-old musician, already ensconced in the house. Jay, she discovers, is her half-brother, and he welcomes her into his comfortable life with his mother and her lesbian partner. Readers learn long before the newfound siblings, however, that Marc fathered another child: Cramer, a twentysomething loner who supports his mentally unstable mother. Is he the sole intruder who stalks and then breaks into the river house? The distance between what readers and characters know creates the story’s central coil of tension, and Wynne-Jones adds extra measures of creepiness in teen-movie scenes of vulnerable Mimi, alone and threatened in the house, and in the flashes of sexual attraction that the half-siblings share. The mystery’s violent conclusion will shock many, but it’s Wynne-Jones’ atmospheric prose and sophisticated exploration of elemental coming-of-age themes that will involve readers most. Grades 9-12. --Gillian Engberg Wynne-Jones has consistently raised the bar for literary thrillers…showcased his talents for suspenseful plotting, nuanced characterization, atmospheric sense of place, and humanistic themes, but The Uninvited may be the best one yet. —The Horn Book (starred review) Tim Wynne-Jones  is an award-winning writer of numerous young adult novels. He lives in Perth, Ontario. CHAPTER ONE MIMI MISSED HER TURN and screeched to a stop. "Shit!" She checked the map on the seat beside her, backed up, and squinted through her own dust at the signpost. Uppe V lenti e Rd. "Close enough." A deep-throated bark seized her attention. A gargantuan dog was tearing toward her from the dilapidated house on the corner. "Shit!" The animal bounced up and down at her door, brindle and with far too many yellow teeth. She threw the Mini Cooper into reverse again and slewed to the left, almost hitting the ugly mutt. "Take that, Hellhound!" Then she thrust the stick shift forward and left the paved road, sending out a rooster tail of gravel. Undaunted, the dog stayed on her tail - stayed with her