Karen Parkman Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Karen Parkman is a published author known for her debut novel, The Jills.

She has attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and graduated with her MFA. She has done work that has been supported by Yaddo, MacDowell, the Sozopol Fiction Seminars, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Karen’s writing has been featured in places such as Joyland, the Michigan Quarterly Review, and more. She has also instructed students, teaching writing at places such as the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, the University of Iowa, and Kirkwood Community College.

The Jills is a 2026 novel by Karen Parkman. If you’ve been looking for a new book to read and want to check out a fresh new voice in fiction, be sure to give this debut from Parkman a try. Kirkus Reviews raved about this book, calling it ‘Surprisingly grim and psychologically complex’. New York Times bestselling author Andrea Bartz also praised the book, saying that it was an ‘unforgettable debut’ and that she ‘couldn’t put it down’.

A cheerleader for the Buffalo Bills is finding that nothing is going to stand in her way when it comes to solving the mystery of why her best friend and teammate disappeared. As she takes on the case with no professional expertise outside of cheerleading, Virginia will enter into a world that she hardly recognizes as she goes deeper into the belly of a city and exposes the tough side of being a professional cheerleader while also having to deal with her own complicated family history.

Virginia is what you would call a Jill, and she works as a professional cheerleader for the Buffalo Bills team. She is thrilled because she has the type of life that she has always wanted and is truly living her dreams. She stays busy practicing on the weekdays, spends her weekends cheering, and takes some of her various nights to go out and move between different events, bars, and clubs along with her teammates.

They’ve always been a close group but Virginia has always been especially close with Jeanine, her best friend. Their friendship was magical from the first moment that it formed and its dynamic nature and foundation were able to give Virginia endless confidence. It even allowed her to move on with her sister Laura when they have had a troubled past.

Needless to say Virginia is very close to Jeanine, and she would notice if anything were wrong. So she immediately has her radar up when Jeanine doesn’t show up for a game on Sunday, something that would never usually happen. Virginia is immediately concerned and knows that something is off and that is confirmed when she texts and calls her best friend, only for them all to go unanswered.

Virginia immediately treats this as a disappearance and that’s what it appears to be, since Jeanine has up and gone missing. She has a network of Jills on her side who are also worried, and reaches out to ex-boyfriends as well as other different seedy contacts of Buffalo’s criminal underground. Armed with this, she starts her own investigation with the hopes that she will be able to locate her best friend safe and sound.

She knew that it would be dangerous, but perhaps was not completely prepared for how risky it would all get. Virginia quickly becomes obsessed with bringing her friend home, and as she keeps digging, questions start to pop up about who Jeanine truly is. It doesn’t take long for Virginia to begin wondering just how well she really knew this person.

Other disturbing prospects start to come to light as well. It isn’t much more time before the cheerleader is questioning whether she can trust the institutions and people that she thought could protect her. She also starts to wonder whether she is putting herself at risk with this search and whether she’ll be able to save herself while also trying to rescue those she cares about.

This is an interesting mystery and a story driven by characters of a woman who has reached out and taken her own power in systems that have been built to favor men, an insightful and witty novel about sisterhood and more. What will happen with Jeanine and can Virginia track her down before it’s too late? Read this thriller from Karen Parkman that will have you captivated until the very last page to find out!