On the Ice (A Mystery)

A chilling, complex mystery about a screenwriter's feverish search for her missing brother on an Antarctic research station by debut author Keaton McGruder.

Ellie Best wins a coveted grant to write a screenplay while staying at the Antarctic research station of McMurdo, and the best part is that her brother Leo, a climate scientist, is leading a research expedition there. But when she arrives, Leo has gone missing . . . and no one can survive for long out on the ice.

Ellie is desperate to find out what happened to Leo, and whether he could still be alive. Everyone is a suspect in the isolated, claustrophobic research station with so few people staying for the winter season. The scientists and support workers Leo knew were changed by the months of darkness, forming a tangled web of relationships, lovers, enemies and secrets. And when there’s a deadly fire on the base that echoes the script Ellie is writing, she realizes that danger is still lurking in the station—and she could be the next target.

Told in dual perspectives, in Leo’s polar winter in pure darkness and Ellie’s austral summer in constant light, On the Ice is a layered mystery about wilderness, isolation, and the need for human connection and love. It’s also a homage to the extraordinarily beautiful but deadly Antarctic, and the scientists exploring the changing polar world.