Welcome to the Common Criminals' Club, a new cosy murder mystery series for middle-grade and teen readers, full of doodles, danger and devious criminals - if you love Robin Stevens, Katie Kirby, Derry Girls, or The Mysterious Benedict Society, step right up: here's your next reading obsession!

This is the story of how we . . .
- Discovered a dead body
- Launched an investigation
- Battled mean girls, feral bats, and nearly destroyed our three-year friendship all in the noble pursuit of solving a complex murder

Mae Flynn is used to the chaos of her rural Irish Catholic boarding school, but she isn’t expecting to discover a dead body in the school kitchen. To make matters worse, the hapless victim, Conor Haddock, was the previous owner of the school building and had recently been talking about selling up, alongside getting on the bad side of seemingly every adult Mae knows. In other words: the suspects are endless.

Along with her best friends, the self-named Common Criminals' Club, Mae is determined to solve the murder. But the more she uncovers, the more she begins to suspect that everyone around her is hiding something. Soon it’s not only her lessons and friendships at stake, but her very life . . .

'Shady shenanigans abound at the rather rural Our Lady of the Sacred Heart school for girls! I was thrilled to join The Common Criminals Club as Mae Flynn and her sisterhood of schoolgirl sleuths as they embarked on a gripping rollercoaster ride full of compelling characters, mean-spirited fellow students, grumpy Guards and neurotic nuns … as well as a slightly puzzling corpse in the kitchen cooler! I read it all in one sitting, my over-excited fingers just couldn’t turn the pages fast enough! A truly exhilarating read with more twists than a mother superior’s rosary beads, this alma mater murder mystery puts the ‘looney’ into Ballymalooney. There’s nothing boring about this boarding school!' -- Alan Nolan, author of the Molly Malone and Bram Stoker series
'Funny, clever, and sharp. A brilliant new take on the murder mystery boarding school genre. More please!' -- Pádraig Kenny, author of Tin and The Monsters of Rookhaven

Alison Weatherby is a middle-grade, teen and YA mystery writer who lives outside of Dublin, Ireland. A winner of Chicken House Books’ Open Coop competition, Alison's debut novel was The Secrets Act, a historical YA mystery set at Bletchley Park during WW2. The Secrets Act won the Redhill Academy Trust Book Award and was shortlisted for the Young Quills Award. The Common Criminals’ Club is her first book for middle grade readers. When she’s not reading or writing about murders, she visits schools to teach kids how to write them. She enjoys reading, running and hitting things at the boxing gym. Alison lives with her husband, two daughters and a very goofy lurcher named Greta.