Hollow City: The Second Novel of Miss Peregrine's Children: 2 (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children) - Hardcover

Ransom Riggs

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1594746125 ISBN 13: 9781594746123

Publisher: Quirk Books, 2014

Synopsis

"Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" was the surprise best seller of 2011--an unprecedented mix of YA fantasy and vintage photography that enthralled readers and critics alike. Publishers Weekly called it "an enjoyable, eccentric read, distinguished by well-developed characters, a believable Welsh setting, and some very creepy monsters."
This second novel begins in 1940, immediately after the first book ended. Having escaped Miss Peregrine's island by the skin of their teeth, Jacob and his new friends must journey to London, the peculiar capital of the world. Along the way, they encounter new allies, a menagerie of peculiar animals, and other unexpected surprises.
Complete with dozens of newly discovered (and thoroughly mesmerizing) vintage photographs, this new adventure will delight readers of all ages.

About this title

About the Author

Ransom Riggs is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. He is also the author of Talking Pictures (Harper Collins, 2012) and The Sherlock Holmes Handbook (Quirk, 2008). He is a graduate of the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts and lives in Los Angeles.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

     We rowed out through the harbor, past bobbing boats weeping rust from their seams, past juries of silent seabirds roosting atop the barnacled remains of sunken docks, past fishermen who lowered their nets to stare frozenly as we slipped by, uncertain whether we were real or imagined; a procession of waterborne ghosts, or ghosts soon to be. We were ten children and one bird in three small and unsteady boats, rowing with quiet intensity straight out to sea, the only safe harbor for miles receding quickly behind us, craggy and magical in the blue-gold light of dawn. Our goal, the rutted coast of mainland Wales, was somewhere before us but only dimly visible, an inky smudge squatting along the far horizon.
     We rowed past the old lighthouse, tranquil in the distance, which only last night had been the scene of so many traumas. It was there that, with bombs exploding around us, we had nearly drowned, nearly been torn apart by bullets; that I had taken a gun and pulled its trigger and killed a man, an act still incomprehensible to me; that we had lost Miss Peregrine and got her back again—snatched from the steel jaws of a submarine—though the Miss Peregrine who was returned to us was damaged, in need of help we didn’t know how to give. She perched now on the stern of our boat, watching the sanctuary she’d created slip away, more lost with every oar stroke.
     Finally we rowed past the breakwater and into the great blank open, and the glassy surface of the harbor gave way to little waves that chopped at the sides of our boats. I heard a plane threading the clouds high above us and let my oars drag, neck craning up, arrested by a vision of our little armada from such a height: this world I had chosen, and everything I had in it, and all our precious, peculiar lives, contained in three splinters of wood adrift upon the vast, unblinking eye of the sea.
     Mercy.

Edition details

• Publisher: Quirk Books
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1594746125
• ISBN 13: 9781594746123
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352