A RE-INTRODUCTION FROM STEENA HOLMES
Briefly introduce yourself to our newest readers
Cold intros are so hard, aren’t they? So let’s imagine we’re sitting in a cozy coffee shop, about to swap our favorite reads over drinks and something sweet.
I’m sipping a brown sugar double espresso — yes, I’m absolutely a coffee addict — and I just grabbed a box of chocolates from the little chocolatier down the street to share. Consider it my way of saying I’m glad you’re here.
As for me? I’m really quite simple. I’m a mother to three beautiful daughters and a Gammy to one precious little girl who has completely stolen my heart. I host reader tours to some of the places I love most in the world — Paris, Belgium, Italy — and I spend much of my time writing about the kinds of secrets and relationships that quietly unravel lives.
Nine Missing Girls is my 5th novel with Joffe Books, and my 56th published during a career that still honestly takes my breath away when I say it out loud. Fifty-six. I’m not sure I’ll ever fully fathom that number.
But what I do know is that every single book has been written with readers like you in mind. So — chocolate?
Briefly introduce Nine Missing Girls
Detective Meri Amber has found killers, searched for the lost and brought some of them home, and has walked out of places most people wouldn’t enter. But there’s one thing Meri Amber is searching for the most, her missing sister — and that’s what drives every single page of this book.
Nine Missing Girls gives you nine case files of missing children, teens and women. My hope is that this is the kind of read where you tell yourself one more chapter, and then suddenly it’s 2am and you have no regrets.
If you’ve been looking for your next obsession, this is it.
How does Nine Missing Girls link to your previous books, The Sister under the Stairs and The Girls in the Basement?
In The Sister Under the Stairs — Meri Amber was introduced as a detective shaped by personal loss. Then in The Girls in the Basement, she returned as Agent Meri Amber, older, sharper, and still carrying the same wound: a missing sister and the man who took her.
Nine Missing Girls is from an earlier chapter in Meri’s world. Nine cases. Nine families. And underneath every investigation, that same quiet obsession to find her sister — because for Meri, this was never just a career. It was always a search.
If you’re new to Meri, don’t worry — this book will pull you straight in. But if you’ve followed her journey from the beginning, you’ll feel the weight of these nine cases in a way that hits just a little differently.
What was the inspiration for creating a story connected through nine short stories?
Honestly? This one’s easy — it was you. The readers.
After The Sister Under the Stairs and The Girls in the Basement, the messages started coming. People wanted more of Meri. They wanted to know what shaped her, what broke her, what kept her going. And I realized that a single novel couldn’t hold all of that. Meri is too layered, too complicated, too human to be contained in one story.
The cases that made her who she is — the ones that haunted her, the ones she carried home — those needed their own space to breathe. Nine stories felt like the only honest way to write her. Not a summary of who she became, but the actual moments that built her, one painful case at a time. So in a way, Nine Missing Girls exists because readers asked for more of Meri.
Was the process of writing this collection of stories different to your usual writing?
Very different — and honestly, I loved it. I typically work on three novels at the same time. One in the morning, one in the afternoon, and then I draft one on weekends. Meri was my weekend project. Every Saturday, I’d lock myself in my office and the outside world would disappear. Except – I wasn’t just drafting her chapters, I was writing them. One case file a weekend. There was a lot of coffee involved!
I started with her rules — because Meri is a woman who lives by a code. Then I let myself go to the darkest places: every scenario where a girl, a child, a teenager could vanish. From there I built each missing file, and then asked myself the question that unlocked everything — how does this case affect Meri personally? And does it touch her sister?
Once I knew that, each case came alive through her voice. And her voice surprised me. The way Meri speaks, the way she moves through a scene — it’s unlike anything I’ve written before. That was the unexpected joy of this book. Writing her in layers, discovering who she was and how she came to be, felt less like drafting and more like uncovering something that was already there.
It was quick. It was passionate. And every Saturday, I genuinely couldn’t wait to get back to her. I’ve never written a book like that before and I’m not sure I ever will again (my family might revolt). I really do hope that you enjoy these stories. I know it doesn’t answer all the questions, but my hope is that this inside look into Meri’s life and passion answers at least a few of those questions people keep emailing me about!
Enjoy the read!