The List of Unspeakable Fears by J. Kasper Kramer

After watching her father die during the typhoid epidemic, 10-year old Essie is plagued by fears.  There are so many, in fact, that she keeps a list — a list of unspeakable fears. Her mother is now remarried to a doctor she believes to be sinister and cold.  He has moved them to an island off New Year City where they live in a creepy, possibly haunted, house with the beacon from the lighthouse scanning her room in the middle of the night. Her step-father is the head of the quarantine hospital for the incurable sick, including the infamous Typhoid Mary. Essie bravely battles her fears while trying to figure out why her step-father walks the ocean’s shores at midnight. Are she and her mother safe?

Fans of “A Monster Calls” will enjoy this psychological thriller by the author of “The Story that Cannot Be Told.”

The center of the universe

Grace Carter is a regular teenaged girl who likes astronomy and want to become an astrophysicist; just kind of a geeky high schooler. But her mother is someone entirely different. GC Carter is a celebrity news anchor, blond, thin, with gorgeous clothes and thousands of fans. Grace and her mother are very different. One day GG disappears with no warning. News crews flock to their house and reporters and news commentators speculate about what might have happened. Meanwhile Grace and her family wait for answers from the authorities. Trying to hold her life together, Grace continues to go to school where she grows closer to a really sweet boy named Mylo, who is facing grief of his own.

As the plot unfolds, Grace learns from her father and her grandmother some secrets from her mother’s long-lost past, and the more Grace learns, the more she wonders if she ever really knew her mother.

The mother-daughter dynamics, the friendships from school, and the geeky STEM-loving character of Grace make this an intriguing book. And as a bonus, in the story, Grace interviews her hero, Elizabeth Tasker, who is a real life famous astrophysicist and science communicator. See https://www.elizabethtasker.com/