Karen M. McManus

Karen M. McManus is an American young-adult author best known for One of Us Is Lying, a mystery following four high school students who become suspects after a classmate dies during a shared detention, told in rotating first-person perspectives reminiscent of a YA riff on The Breakfast Club crossed with a whodunit. Published in 2017, the novel became a major bestseller and was adapted into a Peacock television series, and McManus followed it with sequels and companion novels expanding the same fictional high school and cast, including One of Us Is Next and One of Us Is Back.

McManus has written several further YA thrillers and mysteries outside that series, including Two Can Keep a Secret and The Cousins, generally working in a similar mode of small-town or insular-community secrets unraveled through multiple teenage narrators. Her books are known for tight plotting, credible teenage voices, and a focus on how social dynamics and reputations among a tight-knit group of peers can conceal or distort the truth. New readers should start with One of Us Is Lying, since it is her best-known and most direct entry point, though her other standalone thrillers require no prior familiarity with that series. She remains an active and prolific voice in YA mystery.