Picture the Dead - Softcover

Griffin, Adele; Brown, Lisa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1402268343 ISBN 13: 9781402268342

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire, 2012

Synopsis

"A perfectly haunting combination."
―Jon Scieszka, bestselling author and Caldecott Honor winner

"I loved Picture the Dead. Eerie, romantic, moody, and immersive. A beautifully illustrated gothic delight!"
―Holly Black, New York Times bestselling author of Black Cat

"A tour de force, a remarkable feat of visual and verbal storytelling, as playful as it is serious, as haunting as it is delightful."
―Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Jennie feels the tingling presence of something unnatural in the house now that Will is dead.

Her heart aches without him, and she still doesn't know how he really died. It seems that everywhere she turns, someone is hiding yet another clue. As Jennie seeks the truth, she finds herself drawn ever deeper into a series of tricks and lies, secrets and betrayals, and begins to wonder if she had every really known Will at all.

About this title

About the Author

ADELE GRIFFIN is the critically acclaimed author of numerous young adult novels, including My Almost Epic Summer, The Other Shepards, and National Book Award Finalists Where I Want to Be and Sons of Liberty. She lives in New York City.

LISA BROWN is the bestselling author and illustrator of How to Be and Sometimes and the very popular Baby Be of Use board book series from McSweeney's. She also publishes a bimonthly illustrated book review in the San Francisco Chronicle. She lives in California with her husband, author Lemony Snicket, and their son.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

A ghost will find his way home.

It’s dark outside, an elsewhere hour between midnight and dawn. I lie awake, frozen, waiting for a sound not yet audible. My eyes are open before I hear the wheels of the carriage at the bottom of the drive.

And now the dog is barking, and there’s faint light through my window. The hired man has emerged from his room above the stable, lantern swinging from his hand. I hear Uncle Henry’s lumbering tread, Aunt Clara’s petulant “Henry? Who is it, Henry, at this hour?”

I know that the servants are awake, too, though I can’t hear them. They have been trained to move in silence.

What if the carriage brings news of Quinn and William? Or even my cousins themselves? That would be too much luck, perhaps, but I’m not sure that I’m strong enough for less. Another loss would be unendurable. And we are never given more than we can bear, are we?

When I sit up, I am pinpricked in fear.

The corridor is freezing cold, and the banister is spiky, garlanded in fresh pine. With both sons at war and her only nephew buried this year, Aunt Clara nonetheless insisted on bedecking Pritchett House for the Christmas holiday. Uncle Henry always defers to his wife’s fancies. She’s a spoiled child, blown up into a monster.

Downstairs the front doors are flung open. I join the household gathered on the porch―all of us but the hired man, who stands below in the drive as the trap pulls up. The moment feels eternal. I twist at my ring, a diamond set between two red garnets, more costly than the sum of everything I own. When Will slid it onto my finger, he’d promised that I’d get accustomed to it. Not true, not yet.

“Doctor Perkins,” says Mavis, raising the lantern as the doctor jumps down from the buckboard. The housemaid’s chattering lips are as blue as her bare feet, and her braid swings so close I could reach out and yank it like a bell cord if she didn’t scare so easy.

The doctor signals for Uncle Henry to help him with another passenger.

Quinn. The name shatters through me.

Aunt Clara looks sharp in my direction. Had I spoken out loud? I must have. But I’m sure it’s Quinn. And as the figure emerges, I see that I’m right.

Quinn. Not Will.

He is grotesquely thin and hollowed out, his left eye wrapped in a belt of cloth that winds around his head. He is barely human.

“I’ll need hot water and clean bandaging.” Doctor Perkins is speaking as Mavis’s lantern pitches, throwing wild shadows. “A step at a time, Henry.”

On the sight of her favorite son, Aunt Clara whimpers. Her hands clasp together under a chin that wobbles like aspic. “Oh, my darling boy, safe at home at last.”

Quinn ignores her, an old and useful habit. He brushes past Aunt, the plank of one long arm hooked over Uncle Henry’s neck. But then he squares me in his eye, and in one look I know the worst.

Will is not coming back.

Blood rushes to my head; I might faint. I lean back against a pillar and take slow sips of air.

“A few more steps,” pants the doctor. “Where is the closest bed?”

Quinn’s bedroom is all the way up on the third floor, an inconvenient sickroom. He’d moved there last year, before he’d found a richer rebellion in joining the army and leaving home altogether.

“Give him Jennie’s room,” says Aunt Clara. “Go on. It’s only one flight, off the landing. And Jennie can sleep up in Quinn’s room. It will work perfectly.”

These suggestions part so quick from her lips that I know they’ve been squirreled in her head for a while. Even through her dread and worry, my aunt has been plotting against me.

A very bad sign.

About this edition

• Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1402268343
• ISBN 13: 9781402268342
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272