Grave Images by Jenny Goebel

Bernie, short for Bernadette, lives with her father, mother, and grandmother. Even after a year, her mother is still grieving for a baby brother who died. Her father makes a living engraving monuments for the deceased, but Bernie's life changes when Mr. Stein shows up. He creates etchings, and Bernie's father lets him live in the little room out back in exchange for his work. However, Bernie gets a creepy feeling about him even though his work is beautiful. She gets suspicious when he completes a plaque less than a day after receiving a picture, so she snoops around. She finds a finished etching of a man in Mr. Stein's drawer, and she's frightened when the man turns up dead. What's going on? Is Mr. Stein actually a murderer?

Most of this book is realistic fiction, but there is also an air of supernatural powers to it. I can't say that I've read many books that deal with death in this way. I kept wondering about Mr. Stein, and the author kept making him more mysterious. Bernie teams up with an unlikely partner, and they become detectives trying to solve the mystery. It gets creepy when Bernie finds her own face etched into stone.