They Never Came Home by Lois Duncan

They Never Came Home by Lois Duncan

When high school buddies Larry Drayfus and Dan Cotwell take a backpacking trip into the Mogollon Mountains, nobody is concerned when they don't come home exactly on time. Dan is a natural outdoorsman, and he knows the mountains well. Larry is smart and resourceful. But soon the boys' families must accept the unthinkable, as little sign of them can be found in the hills.

For Larry's sister - and Dan's girlfriend - Joan, grief soon turns to mystery when some of her brother's old acquaintances start calling with strange and threatening messages. In They Never Came Home, the truth of Larry and Dan's disappearance is far more shocking than any of their loved ones can anticipate.

Lois Duncan was a young wife and mother of two when she decided to write a novel to pay the bills. The result was Debutante Hill. The novel was originally rejected for consideration in the Dodd, Mead and Company's Seventeenth Summer Literary contest due to one character drinking a beer, but after Duncan swapped in a soft drink, she won the prize, which paid the down payment on her first house.

Since then, Duncan has written over fifty novels, receiving worldwide acclaim for her young adult fiction. She pioneered the teen suspense novel, and is a regular nominee for the Edgar Allen Poe award. In 1992, Duncan was awarded the Margaret A. Edwards Award For a Distinguished Body of Work for Young Adults. Her novels I Know What You Did Last Summer and Hotel for Dogs have been adapted into popular films.