How would you feel if you and your family had to keep moving and changing names just to keep one step ahead of a man bent on revenge?
DEADMAN’S CASTLE
by Iain Lawrence
Margaret Ferguson Books/Holiday House, Spring 2021
(chez Browne & Miller – voir catalogue)
Ever since twelve-year-old Igor’s dad witnessed and reported a terrible crime, his family has been on the run from the Lizard Man, a foreboding figure bent on retribution. They’ve lived in so many places, with so many identities, ready to bug-out at a moment’s notice, Igor can’t even remember his real name. He’s been homeschooled since they’ve been on the run, but now that he’s twelve, he longs to go to school and make friends. When the witness protection program finds his family yet another new place to live, Igor rebels and his father reluctantly lets him go to school, admonishing him to always come straight home. But as Igor finds a place for himself and makes friends, it gets harder and harder to keep secrets from them. Chafing under his father’s rules, Igor rebels and looks for answers. But when the Lizard Man comes knocking, he’s after Igor, not his dad, and he also ensnares Igor’s new friends. In Deadman’s Castle, nothing is quite what it seems, and danger is lurking around every corner. How they escape and end the cycle of fear and flight makes for a page-turner sure to grab young readers with a taste for mystery and adventure.
Iain Lawrence is a journalist and the author of many acclaimed novels, including Ghost Boy, The Skeleton Tree, Lord of the Nutcracker Men, and the High Seas Trilogy: The Wreckers, The Smugglers, and The Buccaneers. He is the author of fifteen books for young readers and has received many accolades, among them the Governor General’s Award and the California Young Reader Medal. He lives in the Gulf Islands, British Columbia, Canada.
THE WORLD GIVES WAY is set on a generation ship carrying those wealthy enough have escaped Earth—and the contract workers bound to serve them for the ship’s two-hundred-year journey. Myrra Dal was born an indentured worker on this ship, but her generation will live to see the journey’s end and the expiration of their contracts; she just has to spend the next fifty years serving the powerful Carlyles first. But when Myrra discovers the catastrophic secret the elites have been harboring, everything changes. There’s a crack in the ship’s hull, and everyone on board has two months left to live—if that. Burdened with the secret of a lifetime, and the Carlyles’ infant daughter, she runs—but someone is hot on her trail, and not even the end of the world can stop him.
On the morning of August 10, 2019, Jeffrey Epstein, jet-setting consigliere and friend to the rich and powerful, was found unresponsive in his prison cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan where he awaited his second trial for sexual predation and other crimes. He was rushed to a local hospital and one hour later pronounced dead. The coroner’s verdict? Suicide. But cracks in the official story emerged immediately. And the questions kept coming: Why did the surveillance cameras in front of his cell mysteriously stop working that night? Why was Epstein’s cellmate transferred out and never replaced? Why was a high-profile prisoner so suddenly taken off suicide watch and left unguarded for eight hours? How did Epstein get a bedsheet for hanging himself, when his having one was against jail protocol? Finally, was he murdered to protect the powerful people who feared what he might reveal? Many were happy to learn that Epstein would not have his day in open court. Across the world, a sinister web of powerful billionaires, celebrities and political players, including Bill and Hillary Clinton, had reason to sigh with relief at news of Epstein’s death. Having flown on his private planes and visited his many homes—the sites of so many illicit activities—they had much to lose if their transgressions were ever exposed. And now, Epstein was silenced for good. In A CONVENIENT DEATH, investigative reporters Alana Goodman and Daniel Halper search for the truth behind the scandal that shocked the nation. With unprecedented access to Epstein’s victims and lawyers, to medical professionals, Wall Street insiders and law enforcement officers, they reveal the dirty secrets and sinister ties that may have driven someone in Epstein’s circle to take matters into their own hands.
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