A soldier with a hidden past,
a mysterious death at an empty hotel, a femme fatale
manipulating a man for her own purposes—this novel
has all the hallmarks of a classic noir, but Judy Blundell
shifts these tropes into the equally elusive and shady
realm of adolescence. A young girl moves from innocence
to desire, from prejudice to justice and from the tumultuous
bonds of family into a sad, enduring wisdom.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Judy Blundell has written books
for middle grade, young adult, and adult readers under
several pseudonyms. Under the pen name Jude Watson,
she is the author of several New York Times
bestselling and award winning series and media tie-in
novels. Her novel, Premonitions, was an ALA
Reluctant Readers Best Picks and was chosen by the New
York Public Library as a 2004 Best Books for the Teen
Age. Among her forthcoming projects is Book #4 in the
New York Times bestselling series, The
39 Clues. Judy Blundell lives in Katonah, New York,
with her husband and daughter.
ABOUT THE BOOK (from
the publisher)
When Evie's father returned
home from World War II, the family fell back into its
normal life pretty quickly. But Joe Spooner brought
more back with him than just good war stories. When
movie-star handsome Peter Coleridge, a young ex-GI who
served in Joe's company in postwar Austria, shows up,
Evie is suddenly caught in a complicated web of lies
that she only slowly recognizes. She finds herself falling
for Peter, ignoring the secrets that surround him .
. . until a tragedy occurs that shatters her family
and breaks her life in two. As she begins to realize
that almost everything she believed to be a truth was
really a lie, Evie must get to the heart of the deceptions
and choose between her loyalty to her parents and her
feelings for the man she loves. Someone will have to
be betrayed. The question is . . . who? Suggested Links
AUTHOR APPEARANCE
December 3 Teen Author Reading
Night 6-7:30 p.m.
Jefferson Market Branch of NYPL
425 6th Ave, at 10th St. Featuring: Judy Blundell,
What I Saw and How I Lied
Coe Booth, Kendra
Daniel Ehrenhaft, Dirty Laundry
Caroline Hickey, Isabelle’s Boyfriend
Margo Rabb, Cures for Heartbreak
David Van Etten, All That Glitters
EXCERPT
The match snapped, then sizzled,
and I woke up fast. I heard my mother inhale as she
took a long pull on a cigarette. Her lips stuck on the
filter, so I knew she was still wearing lipstick. She’d
been up all night.
She lay on the bed next to
me. I felt her fingers on my hair and I kept sleep-breathing.
I risked a look under my eyelashes.
She was in her pink nightgown,
ankles crossed, head flung back against the pillows.
Arm in the air, elbow bent, cigarette glowing in her
fingers. Tanned legs glistening in the darkness. Blond
hair tumbling past her shoulders.
I breathed in smoke and My
Sin perfume. It was her smell. It filled the air. I
didn’t move, but I could tell she knew I was awake.
I kept on pretending to be asleep. She pretended not
to know.
I breathed in and out, perfume
and smoke, perfume and smoke, and we lay like that for
a long time until I heard the seagulls crying, sadder
than a funeral, and I knew it was almost morning.
We never went to the hotel
dining room now. They knew who we were; they’d
seen our pictures in the paper. We knew they’d
be saying, Look at them eating toast -- how can they
be so heartless?
I rode a bike down to the beach
instead. In the basket I had a bottle of cream soda
and two Baby Ruths. Breakfast.
The sky was full of stacked
gray clouds and the air tasted like a nickel. The sun
hadn’t had time to bake the wetness from the sand.
I had the place to myself. Me and the fishermen. Peter
and I had watched them surfcasting together. One day,
one of them had brought him home.
When Alice fell down the rabbit
hole, she fell slow. She had time to notice things on
her way down -- Oh, there’s a teacup! There’s
a table! So things seemed almost normal to her while
she was falling. Then she bumped down and rolled into
Wonderland, and all hell broke loose.
