Spring has been a stellar season for new middle grade books. These thrilling reads are sure to capture the attention of your favorite adventure enthusiast! What books are your adventurous young readers excited about this month?
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Overview
Only misfits can solve this mystery!
Nothing exciting everhappens in the small town of Newpark where Brian, Hannah, and twins Chris andSam live. And when they start their summer vacation, they know it’s the end ofan era. The Misfits Club, a club they started when they were 8 years old, is disbanding and they still haven’t managed to solve any real mysteries.
But when they persuade new club member Amelia to go and investigate a spooky old house, they unexpectedly discover some stolen goods.
Could this be their chance for one last adventure? One thing is for sure though: Newpark is decidedly more exciting now.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781250079275 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Feiwel & Friends |
| Publication date: | 02/27/2018 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 320 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
| Age Range: | 9 - 13 Years |
About the Author
Kieran Crowley is from Corkin Ireland. His first book, Colm&the Lazarus Key was shortlisted for the Bisto Children's Book of the Year Award 2010 and was followed by a sequel, Colm&The Ghost's Revenge. He is also the author of The Mighty Dynamo.
Kieran Crowley is from Cork in Ireland. His first book, Colm&the Lazarus Key, was shortlisted for the Bisto Children’s Book of the Year Award 2010 and was followed by its sequel, Colm&the Ghost’s Revenge.
Kieran Crowley is from Cork in Ireland. His first book, Colm&the Lazarus Key, was shortlisted for the Bisto Children’s Book of the Year Award 2010 and was followed by its sequel, Colm&the Ghost’s Revenge.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
You're dead."
The thing nobody had ever told Brian about being chased was that it was fun. It was terrifying, too, but that was part of the fun. Of course, the fact that he was on a bicycle, his trusty old Stringer White 5000, meant that he had an advantage over the two idiots who were after him; they were on foot. He flipped the pedals backward, using the rear brakes to send the bike into a curving skid that spat up gravel chips from the churchyard.
It was almost one o'clock, eighteen days to the end of summer vacation and fifteen days to the end of the Misfits Club. A large gray-white cloud was beginning to hide the early afternoon sun as Brian straightened up the bike. On one side of him was the town of Newpark, on the other a road that bisected the town's largest housing development. Beyond that lay the countryside and his escape.
"Did you hear me?" the bigger of his two pursuers shouted.
"I wasn't really listening. Was it something about being dead?"
His mother had said that he had a smart mouth, just like his dad — the only thing they had in common, Brian hoped — and that smart mouths got you into trouble. She was right about that; he was often in trouble.
Of course, he'd be in more trouble if these two hairy gorillas caught up with him. Gorilla number one was flabby and out of shape and not that much of a threat. Gorilla number two was a different prospect, though. He was younger and fitter and he wasn't issuing threats. In fact, he wasn't saying anything at all. That freaked Brian out a little bit. His father had always warned him that the quiet ones were the ones you had to watch out for.
The gap between them was about fifty yards. Unless one of them was an Olympic sprinter, there was no way he was going to be caught.
"You're so dead they'll have to bury you twice," the heavier of the two men roared.
Brian faked a yawn, really exaggerated it, too. "Sorry, did you say something? You're so far away it's hard to hear you."
He thought gorilla number one was going to explode with rage. His cheeks puffed out and his face began to turn crimson, from the tip of his forehead to the bottom of his chin — dazzlingly red — like it was the world's worst superhero power. It made Brian smile until he realized that he'd lost sight of the second guy. There was no sign of him. Had he just given up?
VRRRROOOM.
Uh-oh, Brian thought. That's not the sound of someone giving up. It was actually the sound of a car, a cobalt-blue 2004 Subaru Impreza, to be completely accurate. A souped-up car, if the roaring, guttural engine sounds that sent great rumbling tremors across the ground were anything to go by. It emerged from the hidden parking space on the side of Colbert Street like a predator emerging from the undergrowth.
"Oh crud," Brian said as his stomach lurched.
He was quick on the bike, but he didn't think he was quicker than an Impreza. He was about to find out for certain. The car revved, took off, then stopped briefly to let the bigger guy climb in as Brian spun the bike around by the handlebars, stood up, and began pedaling faster than he ever had before.
There was a left turn thirty yards ahead that led into a cul-de-sac. If he could get to the end of the cul-de-sac, he could make it over the Hennigans' back wall and disappear into the maze of alleys behind their house. They'd never find him there.
The left turn was only ten yards away now. Another plan was beginning to form in Brian's brain.
Form faster, form faster, he thought.
The car closed the distance between them quickly and the nose of the Impreza was just behind him as he turned into the cul-de-sac at full speed, leaning low, his shoulder almost grazing the ground as the bike struggled to stay on two wheels.
Brian was almost parallel to the tarmac, but he was in the flow — completely focused, nothing existing outside of him and this moment. Time slowed. He could see everything all at once, hear the noise of children playing, smell the fumes from the car's giant exhaust, then the whine as the car struggled to follow him into the turn.
The back end of the car swung wide, dragging the rest of the vehicle with it, followed by the look of sheer panic on the bigger man's face as he briefly thought they were going to smack into a wall. The younger man corrected the spin with two sharp movements of the steering wheel. The car righted itself with a judder.
Brian launched himself onto the small green, and circled around, digging a tire track in the soft grass, before heading back in the goons' direction. He knew he wouldn't make it to the Hennigans' house before they caught him. It was time for Plan B.
As they watched, openmouthed, he briefly considered making a rude gesture, but instead he just waved. It was hard to tell because he was traveling at full speed, but they appeared to be getting even angrier.
He didn't want to head back toward town — they'd catch him too easily — so there was only a single possibility left. It was one he didn't want to take because it depended on how lazy a neighbor had been over the last few days, but he decided that he had no other choice. The other possibilities, ones that involved him begging for mercy or shouting for someone to call the cops, never occurred to him.
The turn-off was on the opposite side of the road, past the housing development. He was nearly there when he heard the car's tires squeal as it joined him on the main road.
He veered the bike right again, down a narrow path with grass growing in the middle. The end of the housing development was on one side, nothing but fields on the other. Brian hoped that the farmer who owned the fields hadn't gotten around to fixing the broken fence yet. It sagged down next to the iron gate at the end of the path, leaving an opening of about three feet, enough of a gap for Brian and the bike to make it through if he was careful, but not enough space for a car to follow. Brian pedaled furiously. The adrenaline that had kept him going was running out now — his lungs were on fire and his legs felt like concrete, but he kept pedaling. He was only feet away when the car loomed up behind him.
He was going to make it.
As he slipped between the tumbledown barbed-wire fence and the concrete post of the iron gate, he saw that it was padlocked. He heard the screech of brakes as the car tried to avoid slamming into the gate. He'd done it. Even if they tried to break the lock, he'd be miles away from them by the time they managed it. The only way they could chase him now was by running after him, and he knew they wouldn't do that. They'd never catch him on foot.
He glanced behind and saw both of them standing by the car. The bigger guy was shaking his fist and shouting something at him. Something rude, no doubt, but Brian couldn't hear it.
They'd given up. He was free. Or at least he would have been if he'd been paying attention.
The grassy field wasn't the smoothest of surfaces and as he bounced along the rutted path he hit something, a rock maybe, nothing he could clearly see. It jolted the bike and sent him flying over the handlebars. He hit the ground hard, scudded along the surface for a couple of seconds before he came to a stop, twisted on his side.
"Ow," he said.
Ow was a little bit of an understatement. It hurt a lot more than an ow's worth. He heard one of the men laugh, a hollow mocking laugh that really annoyed him, nearly as much as the severe pain he was in annoyed him.
Brian clambered to his feet. The men had taken a few steps into the field. He was in no shape to outrun them. He wasn't even sure he could reach his bike in time.
"We've got him now," one of them said.
CHAPTER 2
Brian did the first thing that popped into his head. He pretended he'd become faint and flopped to the ground. It was a bit overdramatic and he wouldn't have won an Oscar for it — in fact, his performance would have been booed on many stages — but it was all that came to mind. After falling off his bike, he wasn't in any condition to outrun the gorillas who were following him.
He hoped that they'd just turn around and drive away, but of course they didn't do that. He hadn't heard them walking through the soft grass, so he was lucky he didn't jump when he heard their voices close by.
"Is he dead?" one of them asked.
Brian kept his eyes shut tight. He tried to keep his breathing as shallow as possible.
"He'd better not be. I don't want to end up in prison. Not again."
"He fell off his bike. We didn't do anything. We're innocent."
"You know how them lawyers twist things around. They'll make out that it was all our fault. They'll say we were trying to rob that shop when all we did was forget our wallets and they'll say we were putting this stupid kid in danger when we were just messing around. He was the one who started the chase."
"I hate lawyers."
"Maybe we should check if he's dead."
The bigger guy, gorilla number one, poked at Brian's back with the toe of his sneaker. Brian groaned a little.
"He's alive," the smaller one said, sounding relieved.
"Should we give him CPR?"
"What? Are you nuts? We're not touching him. Fingerprints and all that. No, we're getting out of here. The sooner we're on the road, the better." He leaned over and spoke into Brian's ear. "If anyone asks you questions about today, you say nothing, right? You never saw us."
Brian groaned again.
The guy took the groan as a sign of agreement. He stood up.
"Let's get out of here before we get in trouble," the big guy said, stomping his way back to the car and bellowing in despair when one of his fancy sneakers landed in a present a cow with a nervous stomach had left behind in the field.
Brian kept his eyes shut until he heard the car racing off into the distance, then he opened them and sat up.
"Morons," he said.
He rubbed the back of his neck then got to his feet. He was okay. A few aches and pains, which were going to feel a lot worse tomorrow, and some ringing in his ears, but nothing he couldn't handle. He picked up his bike and examined it closely. There was surprisingly little damage. One of the forks looked like it was out of alignment, but Chris would fix that up — his friend was really good with mechanical stuff. Better not to ride the bike until he'd had a look at it, though.
He wheeled it through the field, back along the narrow path and down the main road where the cars whizzed by far too quickly, until he was back in the town. As he reached Doherty's Shop, old Mrs. Doherty came running out to meet him. Running was pushing it a bit — it was more like she was speed-shuffling.
"Brian, Brian," she cried.
"Hi, Mrs. Doherty."
"Are you okay?"
"Me? I'm fine. What about you?"
"I wasn't the one who was chased by a couple of baloobas."
Brian wasn't sure what a balooba was, but he was fairly certain she wasn't using the term as a compliment. "Ah, that was nothing."
"Nothing? Nothing? You were a brave young man taking them on. And for my sake, too. You're a hero in my eyes. Now, come in here and tell me all about it."
Despite his protests, she brought him into her shop and made him sit on a little wooden stool while she peered over her large-framed glasses and attended to the cuts and scratches on his hands and face. As usual, the shop was empty. Brian couldn't understand why she even bothered opening most of the time. Newpark had three large supermarkets — and two smaller ones — where everyone went to do their shopping. Most of what Mrs. Doherty sold wasn't exactly what people bought anymore, either: hard candies, newspapers, and some homegrown vegetables. Brian had no idea how old she was, but his dad had once told him she was an old woman when he was Brian's age, so he reckoned she must be pretty ancient.
"That was very brave of you," she said again. "Brave, but foolish."
"I like being foolish," Brian said.
He had been passing by earlier when he'd seen gorillas one and two inside the shop, hassling Mrs. Doherty. They were getting cigarettes and drinks and chocolate and told her they had no cash on them, but that they'd come back and pay tomorrow. Brian knew that they had no intention of coming back and paying. And he didn't like the look of fear on Mrs. Doherty's face, either. So he'd grabbed a two-liter bottle of soda, shaken it up, and emptied it all over the bigger guy. He couldn't have much of a sense of humor because he'd taken it badly, which is why Brian ended up being chased by them. He might have ended up crashing his bike, but at least he'd gotten them off Mrs. Doherty's back.
"Next time you see someone causing trouble in my shop, let me handle it. I don't want you getting hurt. After all, you have your whole life ahead of you. The majority of my life is made up of yesterdays."
"You're not that old," Brian said.
Mrs. Doherty smiled at that.
"Why didn't you call someone for help?" Brian asked.
"If I did, there'd be a fuss and my son would find out. He doesn't like me working here — he'd prefer me to be sitting safe at home staring at the walls. I keep the shop open so I don't have to do that. I know you might think it's quiet, but people often drop in for a chat. I like it that way."
She wouldn't let him leave without giving him some free groceries. Since his father never went shopping, he was glad to get them.
"They're just to say thank you," she said. "It's nice to know that some young people will step in and help when there's trouble around."
"Any time," Brian said, and he meant it.
* * *
"What in the name of all that's good and holy is that green thing?" Brian's father asked, snorting to express his disgust.
"It's kale," Brian said.
"Kale?" His father poked at it with his fork, before repeating the word. "Kale."
"It's a vegetable."
Brian's father, Patrick Duffy McDonnell, but known by most as Mucky, stared at his son.
"What have I told you about vegetables?"
"That you don't like them?"
"That I don't like them — do you hear him?" he asked, even though there was nobody else in the house other than Brian and himself. "I don't just not like them, I hate them. I haven't eaten a vegetable since 1983 and I have no intention of starting now."
It was quite possibly true that Mucky hadn't eaten a vegetable in over thirty years, unless you counted potatoes as a vegetable, which he didn't. Even when he got his welfare check and went to the diner, he never got mushy peas or onion rings or anything like that. Most of the time it was a burger and fries or sausage and fries. Pizza, if he was feeling fancy. But never a vegetable. If Brian's father ever had to become a vegetarian for medical reasons, he'd be dead by the end of the week.
Mucky shifted the green contents of his plate onto Brian's before digging into a large portion of chicken nuggets. "You can eat it. And make a better lunch tomorrow, right? Where did you get it from anyway?"
"Mrs. Doherty grows it herself and she threw it in with the groceries. She said we might like it. Thought we'd give it a try," Brian said. He hadn't told him the truth about what he'd been up to earlier and he wasn't going to tell him, either.
His father was looking at him strangely, as if something wasn't quite right.
"You been fighting?" he asked eventually.
Brian had been home for over an hour, yet it was only now that Mucky noticed his son was in much poorer physical condition than he'd been the last time he'd seen him, which, he thought, was either yesterday or the day before that.
"No, I fell off my bike."
"That's good. If you looked like that after a fight, it means you'd have lost. Don't want any son of mine embarrassing the family by taking a beating." He got up from the small kitchen table, took a packet of chocolate cookies from the cupboard, and slumped onto the couch. "Make me a cup of tea, like a good lad. And Sharon's coming over in a while, so tidy the place up a bit. You've left it in a real mess."
Mucky had never been the world's greatest father, but he hadn't always been like this, either. The biggest problem with Brian and Mucky was that they had nothing in common other than the ability to make smart remarks at the wrong time. People had always said Brian was like his mom and they were right. Mucky was interested in cars and football and playing cards, and Brian didn't like any of those things. They never had much to say to each other and it had always been a little awkward between them, but Brian's mom had a wonderful knack for making things all right. But then she left and now he only saw her every couple of months. Brian and his dad hadn't been the same since she'd gone — they just seemed to get on each other's nerves.
Brian's mom used to collect fridge magnets for some reason, those ones that had inspirational quotes. They'd been stuck all over the fridge door, a couple of them falling off anytime someone went to fetch milk or butter. Brian remembered a bright orange one that was stuck right beside the handle. It read: Your life does not get better by chance — it gets better by change. The day after his mom had left, he'd thrown it in the trash. Anytime there had been changes in his life things had only gotten worse. Yes, he thought, anyone who thinks change is good is an idiot.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Misfits Club"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Kieran Crowley.
Excerpted by permission of Feiwel and Friends.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
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