Orphan Monster Spy

"Like Inglourious Basterds for tweens, this clever YA title features Sarah, a blond, blue-eyed Jewish girl in 1939 Germany."-- The New York Post ;;;; After her mother is shot at a checkpoint, fifteen-year-old Sarah finds herself on the run from the Nazis in Third Reich-ruled Germany. While trying to escape, Sarah meets a mysterious man with an ambiguous accent, a suspiciously bare apartment, and a lockbox full of weapons. He's part of the secret resistance against the Reich, and he needs her help. ;;;; Sarah is to hide in plain sight at a boarding school for the daughters of top Nazi brass, posing as one of them. She must befriend the daughter of a key scientist to gain access to the blueprints for a bomb that could destroy the cities of Western Europe, and steal them. ;;;; Sarah may look like the rest of the girls, innocent, blonde-haired, and young, but she refuses to become one of the monsters she's surrounded by. She's a brilliant con artist, convincing them she's one of them even as she lives in terror of being found out. And she's determined to get her revenge on them all.

ldquo;A stunning, smart, grounded tale of intrigue in Nazi Germany, so guilty and detailed it feels like true memory rather than fiction. Sarah is an angry, appealing, heart-wrenching hero, superhuman and achingly frail in equal measure. I wish I’d written this myself. Deeply disturbing and chillingly good.”—Elizabeth Wein, New York Times bestselling author of *Code Name Verity

* “I found myself mesmerized by Sarah’s journey into a world of human monsters. Orphan Monster Spy weaves one heroine’s courage through a spectrum of darkness, and the effects resonate long after the final page.” —Ryan Graudin, award-winning author of the Wolf By Wolf duology

“Killeen expertly conjures the day-to-day evil of Nazi Germany in this terrific page turner.”—Paul Dowswell, award-winning author of *The Auslander

"A powerful, bleak, and penetrating portrait of an isolated young woman excelling in unimaginable danger."—*Kirkus Reviews

Autorentext

Matt Killeen was born in Birmingham, in the UK, back in the war-mad seventies--a hometown largely demolished and rebuilt in his lengthy absence. People tend to dismiss what comes more easily to them as unworthy, so it took him far too long to realize he was a writer. He worked as an advertising copywriter and largely ignored music and sports journalist in the noughties, before fulfilling a childhood dream to join the LEGO® Group in 2010. He left after eight years, and an unconscionable amount of money spent in the staff store, to become a full-time author. A lover of costume parties, he is an avid gamer, soccer fan, toddler wrangler and warrior for truth and social justice. Although a devout urbanite, he has somehow ended up surrounded by fields in a house full of LEGO® bricks and musical instruments, with his two diversely aged children, Nuyorican soul mate and neurotic fluffy dog. Orphan Monster Spy was his debut novel and he has still not learned to touch-type.

Zusammenfassung
"Like Inglourious Basterds for tweens, this clever YA title features Sarah, a blond, blue-eyed Jewish girl in 1939 Germany."--*The New York Post*

After her mother is shot at a checkpoint, fifteen-year-old Sarah finds herself on the run from the Nazis in Third Reich-ruled Germany. While trying to escape, Sarah meets a mysterious man with an ambiguous accent, a suspiciously bare apartment, and a lockbox full of weapons. He's part of the secret resistance against the Reich, and he needs her help.
Sarah is to hide in plain sight at a boarding school for the daughters of top Nazi brass, posing as one of them. She must befriend the daughter of a key scientist to gain access to the blueprints for a bomb that could destroy the cities of Western Europe, and steal them.
Sarah may look like the rest of the girls, innocent, blonde-haired, and young, but she refuses to become one of the monsters she's surrounded by. She's a brilliant con artist, convincing them she's one of them even as she lives in terror of being found out. And she's determined to get her revenge on them all.

Leseprobe
This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof

Copyright © 2018 Matt Killeen

ORPHAN, MONSTER, SPY

 

One

August 28, 1939

FINALLY, THE CAR came to a stop. With difficulty, Sarah opened her eyes, blinked to clear her vision, and looked up from her hiding place in the footwell. Her mother was slumped in the driver’s seat, her head against the top of the steering wheel. She was gazing through the spokes to where Sarah crouched. Her mother’s eyes were *almost *the same, wide and pretty. Her pupils were so big Sarah could nearly see herself in them. But now they seemed dull. Her mother was no longer in there.

Sarah reached out, but something hot dripped onto her hand, and she snatched it back. Her palm was bright red next to her white fingers.

Lauf, dumme Schlampe!

Sarah could hear the voice in her head, but her mother’s lips weren’t moving. Her nose was blocked and her eyes hurt. The pain was a fog across her thinking. Again she heard it. *Lauf! Run! *She looked at her mother’s face once more, in time to see her forehead slide off the top of the wheel. The eyes, still staring, now regarded the floor. *Lauf. Just run. *Sarah thought the voice was her own.

The door handle turned, but the door didn’t open. She tried again. It opened a crack, but she was pushing against the whole weight of the door, as if up a hill. Her hand was slick with blood, so she rubbed it on her coat and tried again. By sticking her shoulder against the door panel, she managed to heave it wide open, spilling the cold light of evening into the car. She scrambled up and out. The Mercedes had come to a rest in the ditch by the roadside, its nose buried in a warehouse fence.

Sarah looked into the car and saw what the bullet had done to the back of her mother’s head. She fought a wave of nausea as the door swung shut, but she felt nothing else. Not yet.

Her heart was beating fast and loud in her ears, the air stinging her nose. Her neck felt hot. Behind her, the soldiers from the checkpoint were just rounding the distant corner that she and her mother had careened around moments ago, just before the shot. There were voices, shouts, running feet on the asphalt. Dogs began to bark. They were closing. Where now? What now?

Lauf.

Sarah flung herself onto the warm hood and crawled across it toward the break the car had made in the warehouse fence. The shards of broken windshield tore at her hands and knees. She slid off into the brambles and then pushed through them on all fours, picking up splinters of wood, thorns, and broken glass.

Don’t look back. Keep going. Ignore the pain in your hands and knees. Lauf.

She let the voice run riot in her head as she broke through the fence. Her voice? Her mother’s? It didn’t matter.

Onto your feet now. That’s it. Lauf, Lauf, run, run.

She sprinted into an alley between two old buildings, kicking up the sludge deposited by overflowing gutters. Looking up she could see the rusting gutters hanging from the roof edges, the leaf litter that blocked the drains. About two meters high. Too high. Too precarious. But this claustrophobic corridor continued into the distance, and she could hear the dogs closing.

Get up there, dumme Schlampe. Don’t call me that.

Well, you’re being one. What kind of a gymnast are you?

A Jewish gymnast. Not permitted to compete.

*You’re a dead Jewish gymnast if you don’t move. Are you hardy? Pious? Cheer…