Blue Balliett’s seven young adult mysteries -- Chasing Vermeer, The Wright 3, The Calder Game, The Danger Box, Hold Fast, Pieces and Players, and Out of the Wild Night-- have been New York Times, Publisher’s Weekly, USA Today, Book Sense and Indie Bound bestsellers.
Blue won the Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best Juvenile Novel, the Agatha Award for Best YA Novel, the Chicago Tribune Prize for Young Adult Fiction, Chicago Public Library Foundation’s 21st Century Award, Book Sense Book of the Year Award, Great Lakes Book Award, Friends of American Writers Award, Chicago Tribune’s Chicagoan of the Year for Literature, 2010, and a place in the official White House library as The Danger Box was handed to President Obama in January 2011 as a gift from the American Booksellers Association.
Out of the Wild Night (March 2018) is both a ghost story and a mystery, and is set entirely on Nantucket in the off-season.