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 in Antarctica at McMurdo Station, 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.

Desperate to find out what happened to Leo, Ellie begins to investigate. Everyone is a suspect in the isolated, claustrophobic research station. 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 chilling debut mystery about isolation, survival, and the need for human connection and love—set against the breathtaking, and deadly, landscape of Antarctica.