Truly Devious Set: Truly Devious, The Vanishing Stair, The Hand on the Wall, The Box in the Woods

Truly Devious Series 4 Books Collection Set by Maureen Johnson brings together four mysteries centred on amateur sleuth Stevie Bell. The set spans cases linked to Ellingham Academy and beyond, from long-buried crimes to investigations that refuse to stay in the past.

Across the collection, Stevie is drawn into unsolved murders, a notorious kidnapping, and a series of deaths that raise unsettling questions about coincidence and intent. From a summer at home interrupted by a message about an infamous 1978 case, to the riddles and twisting pathways of a celebrated Vermont school, each instalment follows Stevie as she tries to make sense of events that others would rather leave alone.

Included titles

• Truly Devious
• The Vanishing Stair
• The Hand on the Wall
• The Box in the Woods

Key details

• Four-book collection set
• By Maureen Johnson
• Series: Truly Devious
• Includes four titled volumes listed above

Synopses

The Box in the Woods

After catching a killer at her high school, Stevie Bell returns home for what should be a normal summer. Her plans change when she receives a message from the owner of Sunny Pines, formerly Camp Wonder Falls, connected to an infamous unsolved case. In 1978, four camp counsellors were killed in the woods outside Barlow Corners.

Truly Devious

Ellingham Academy is a famous private school in Vermont for the brightest thinkers, inventors, and artists. Founded by early twentieth-century tycoon Albert Ellingham, it was designed as a place of riddles, twisting pathways, and gardens. Ellingham described it as a place where learning is a game.

The Vanishing Stair

The Truly Devious case, an unsolved kidnapping and triple murder that shook Ellingham Academy in 1936, has consumed Stevie for years and is why she came to the academy. After a classmate is murdered, her parents pull her out of school for her safety. Stevie is told she must move past her obsession with crime.

The Hand on the Wall

At Ellingham Academy, three people are now dead: one from either a prank gone wrong or a murder, another by misadventure, and another in an accident in Burlington. Each death happened at the wrong place and the wrong time, and at the exact moment of Stevie’s greatest triumph. Stevie knows who Truly Devious is.