**INSTANT *NEW YORK TIMES* AND INDIE BESTSELLER! ** **Bestselling author Melissa Albert returns with *The Bad Ones* , a supernatural horror novel about four mysterious disappearances in a town haunted by a sinister magical history** ***Goddess, goddess, count to five*** ***In the morning, who’s alive?*** In the course of a single winter’s night, four people vanish without a trace across a small town. Nora’s estranged best friend, Becca, is one of the lost. As Nora tries to untangle the truth of Becca’s disappearance, she discovers a darkness in her town’s past, as well as a string of coded messages Becca left for her to unravel. These clues lead Nora to a piece of local lore: a legendary goddess of forgotten origins who played a role in Nora and Becca’s own childhood games. . . . An arresting, crossover horror fantasy threaded with dark magic, *The Bad Ones* is a poison-pen love letter to semi-toxic best friendship, the occult power of childhood play and artistic creation, and the razor-thin line between make-believe and belief.