White Crow - Softcover

Sedgwick, Marcus

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1444001493 ISBN 13: 9781444001495

Publisher: Orion Children's Books, 2011

Synopsis

An eerie, modern gothic thriller about what awaits us after death - angels or the devil . . . A fast-paced, dark, sinister and powerful novel, shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal 2011 and longlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize 2010.

It's summer. Taken from the buzz of London, her friends and what she thinks is the start of a promising romance, Rebecca is an unwilling visitor to Winterfold.

Ferelith already lives in Winterfold - it's a place that doesn't like to let you go, and she knows it inside out: the beach, the crumbling cliff paths, the village streets, the woods, the deserted churches and ruined graveyards, year by year being swallowed by the sea.

Against their better judgement, Rebecca and Ferelith become friends, and during that long, hot, claustrophobic summer they discover more about each other - and about Winterfold - than either could have wanted. Frightening secrets are uncovered that would have been best long forgotten.

Interwoven with Rebecca and Ferelith's stories is that of the seventeenth century Rector and Dr Barrieux, master of Winterfold Hall, whose bizarre and bloody experiments into the after-life might make angels weep, and the devil crow . . .

About this title

About the Author:

Marcus Sedgwick is a full time author. His first novel,Floodland, won the Branford Boase Award for the best debut children's novel of 2000. Since then his books have been shortlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, the Blue Peter Book Award, the Costa Book Award, the Carnegie Medal and the Edgar Allan Poe Award.

Find his website at www.marcussedgwick.com and follow him on Twitter @marcussedgwick.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

REBECCA

 
She could have been anyone.
She could have been any girl who arrived in Winterfold that summer.
That sounds strange, doesn’t it?
It sounds strange to my ears, anyway. Summer in Winterfold. How can there ever be any other season here but winter, with a name like that? But whatever the time of year, Winterfold has a cold embrace and, like the snows of winter, it does not let you go easily.
Once upon a time there was a whole town here, not just a handful of houses. A town with twelve churches and thousands of people, dozens of streets, and a busy harbor.
And then the sea ate it.
Storm by storm, year by year, the cliffs collapsed into the advancing sea, taking the town with it, house by house and street by street, until all that was left was a triangle of three streets, a dozen houses, an inn, a church. Well, most of it ...
And then, that summer, she arrived. And actually I’m lying.
She couldn’t have been anyone, because the moment I saw her beautiful face I knew I loved her, and I knew she would love me, too.
I knew.

 
Text copyright © 2011 by Marcus Sedgwick

About this edition

• Publisher: Orion Children's Books
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1444001493
• ISBN 13: 9781444001495
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1