A dark and twisted story about a sleepy town with a dark secret--and the three kids brave enough to uncover it. Perfect for fans of Stranger Things.

Every thirteen years in the town of Eden Eld, three thirteen-year-olds disappear.

Eleanor has just moved to the quiet, prosperous Eden Eld. When she awakes to discover an ancient grandfather clock that she's never seen before outside her new room, she's sure her eyes must be playing tricks on her. But then she spots a large bird, staring at her as she boards the school bus. And a black dog with glowing red eyes follows her around town. All she wants is to be normal, and these are far from normal. And worse--no one else can see them.

Except for her new friends, Pip and Otto, who teach her a thing or two about surviving in Eden Eld. First: Don't let the "wrong things" know you can see them. Second: Don't speak of the wrong things to anyone else.

The only other clue they have about these supernatural disturbances is a book of fairytales unlike any they've read before. It tells tales of the mysterious Mr. January, who struck a cursed deal with the town's founders. Every thirteenth Halloween, he will take three of their children, who are never heard from again. It's up to our trio to break the curse--because Eden Eld's thirteen years are up. And Eleanor, Pip, and Otto are marked as his next sacrifice.

Autorentext

Kate Alice Marshall

Klappentext

Neil Gaiman's Coraline meets Stranger Things in a dark and twisted story about a sleepy town with a dark secret-and the three kids brave enough to uncover it.

Every thirteen years in the town of Eden Eld, three thirteen-year-olds disappear.

Eleanor has just moved to the quiet, prosperous Eden Eld. When she awakes to discover an ancient grandfather clock that she's never seen before outside her new room, she's sure her eyes must be playing tricks on her. But then she spots a large bird, staring at her as she boards the school bus. And a black dog with glowing red eyes follows her around town. All she wants is to be normal, and these are far from normal. And worse-no one else can see them.

Except for her new friends, Pip and Otto, who teach her a thing or two about surviving in Eden Eld. First: Don't let the "wrong things" know you can see them. Second: Don't speak of the wrong things to anyone else.

The only other clue they have about these supernatural disturbances is a book of fairytales unlike any they've read before. It tells tales of the mysterious Mr. January, who struck a cursed deal with the town's founders. Every thirteenth Halloween, he will take three of their children, who are never heard from again. It's up to our trio to break the curse-because Eden Eld's thirteen years are up. And Eleanor, Pip, and Otto are marked as his next sacrifice.

Series Overview: We have a second middle grade book signed up with Kate for Fall 2021, which will be a follow up to Thirteens.

Leseprobe

One

Eleanor stared at the grandfather clock in the third-­floor hall. It stood eight feet tall, made of dark oak. A bone-­white pendulum hung within the case, carved like cords woven together in a loose diamond. It reminded her of the end of a key, but maybe that was only because of the keys that were painted on the wood around the clock face: thirteen identical keys in gold. The last key was almost entirely rubbed away.
The clock must be very old. It felt like it had tracked the passing of years and years. But she was not staring at the clock because it was tall, or impressive, or old. She was staring at for three reasons.

The first was that the clock hadn t been there when she went to sleep last night. Eleanor was sure of it. It stood opposite her door, and she felt certain she would have noticed an eight-­foot-­tall clock outside her bedroom or heard someone moving it into place.

The second was that those thirteen keys, gleaming against the dark wood, were the precise shape of the birthmark on her wrist.

The third was that the hands of the clock were running backward.

It s just a clock, she told herself. Nothing sinister. Maybe it had belonged to her grandparents, and Aunt Jenny had inherited it along with this house and the old car in the back shed that didn t run and the rambling, neglected orchard that spilled out behind the house like a half-­grown forest.

Except that it hadn t been here last night.

And that wouldn t explain the keys. Or why the hands were moving backward ­the second hand gliding from twelve to eleven to ten, all the way around to one; the minute hand clicking back every sixty seconds as the pendulum went left to right to left to right.

The clock chimed. The liquid, bottomless sound filled the hall, bouncing off the walls with their faded green wallpaper, spilling down toward the spiral staircase. Eleanor counted the chimes.

Seven.

Her phone agreed with the chimes ­seven o clock ­but the contrary hands of the clock pointed instead to five and twelve. Seven hours backward from midnight, she thought, and rubbed the birthmark on her wrist reflexively.

Eleanor! Aunt Jenny called. Come grab some breakfast before the bus comes. You don t want to be hungry on your first day.

Eleanor didn t want to be anything on her first day of school at Eden Eld Academy. She didn t want to have a first day at Eden Eld Academy. But she had promised Aunt Jenny and Ben, and she had already broken enough promises.

She didn t want to turn her back on the clock, either, but she did, and scurried down the hall with her backpack over one shoulder. The boards creaked and groaned even with the hall rug to cushion her steps, and so did the stairs, which curled in a tight curve down to the first floor. She d never lived in a house with a spiral staircase. Ashford House, which her grandparents had bought before her mother was born, had two of them. The house was full of odd things like that. Crooked hallways, skewed rooms, a stairway to nowhere. The clock ought to have fit right in.

Except ­except she was sure, absolutely sure, it hadn t been there last night.

Aunt Jenny was in the kitchen, her back to the hall, pushing scrambled eggs out of a pan and onto an old china plate covered in a pattern of blue vines. Normally she had a thin face, like Eleanor, but right now it was soft and round, along with the rest of her. Her belly was so big she bumped against the counter, and as she finished with the eggs, she winced and muttered, Oh, that s enough of that, you rascal, which meant the baby was kicking her ribs again.

Eleanor had always thought she looked more like Jenny than her own mother. They had the same brown hair, though instead of han