The Archived - Softcover

Schwab, Victoria

Softcover

ISBN 10: 142317108X ISBN 13: 9781423171089

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2014

Synopsis

Imagine a place where the dead rest on shelves like books.
Each body has a story to tell, a life seen in pictures that only Librarians can read. The dead are called Histories, and the vast realm in which they rest is the Archive. Da first brought Mackenzie Bishop here four years ago, when she was twelve years old, frightened but determined to prove herself. Now Da is dead, and Mac has grown into what he once was: a ruthless Keeper, tasked with stopping often-violent Histories from waking up and getting out. Because of her job, she lies to the people she loves, and she knows fear for what it is: a useful tool for staying alive.

Being a Keeper isn't just dangerous-it's a constant reminder of those Mac has lost. Da's death was hard enough, but now that her little brother is gone too, Mac starts to wonder about the boundary between living and dying, sleeping and waking. In the Archive, the dead must never be disturbed. And yet, someone is deliberately altering Histories, erasing essential chapters. Unless Mac can piece together what remains, the Archive itself might crumble and fall.

In this haunting, richly imagined novel, Victoria Schwab reveals the thin lines between past and present, love and pain, trust and deceit, unbearable loss and hardwon redemption.

About this title

About the Author

Victoria Schwab (www.VictoriaSchwab.com) is the author of several novels, including, The Near Witch-which Kirkus praised for its "shivery horror tang" and "extraordinary sense of place"-and The Archived, of which The Horn Book said "[Schwab] writes of death, sorrow, and family love with a light, intelligent touch and inventive vigor, and provides romance with a pleasing edge of unpredictability." When she is not wandering through foreign countries, Victoria can usually be found tucked in the corner of a coffee shop in Nashville, sipping tea and dreaming of monsters.

From School Library Journal

Gr 9 Up-Mackenzie was just 11 when her Da passed along the heavy responsibility of being a "Keeper": one in charge of returning Histories to the Archive. A History is a sort of ghost, but more like a copy of a dead person's life. Librarians keep every History on a shelf, in a complex and rigid order. But every once in a while one slips (becomes restless and crazed) and escapes the orderly Archive into the chaos of the Narrows-a lightless series of corridors filled with doors. A Keeper's role is to return the Histories to the Archive lest they escape into the real world. When her family moves to an old hotel turned apartment building called the Coronado after the tragic death of her beloved little brother, Mac's workload of wandering Histories begins increasing exponentially. Plus, she meets a strange-looking Goth guy named Wes who shocks her by confessing that he, too, is a Keeper, and she begins to bond with him. Soon the ordered quiet of the Archive is booming with the noise of escaped Histories, and there appears to be a saboteur. Mac uncovers a dark secret held in the walls of the Coronado. Something terrible happened there and great lengths have been taken to cover it up. Stranger still is Owen, whom Mac encounters in the Narrows, a History who is not on her list and somehow has not yet slipped. Schwab skillfully manages that rare accomplishment: a spine-tingling, supernatural, ghostly mystery that is fully believable. A writer to watch for sure-sequel please!-Tara Kehoe, Plainsboro Public Library, NJα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 142317108X
• ISBN 13: 9781423171089
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352