Fans of Lemony Snicket will feel themselves in good authorial hands with Pseudonymous Bosch. Dire warnings about calamities to come, knowing asides, footnotes and appendices abound, giving the book a distinct feel and putting the reader on the inside of the jokes. Its hero Clay is struggling to cope with the disappearance of his stage-magician brother Max-Ernest (of Bosch’s best-selling Secrets series) when an unfortunate case of wrongly-attributed graffiti lands him in trouble at school. Sent to Earth Ranch, a camp to help children ‘outgrow problem behaviours’ set on a desert island, complete with volcano, things get mysteriouser and mysteriouser. What are his fellow camp inmates up to, can the island really be haunted, and what’s the secret of the burned out buildings at the island’s heart? Readers will want to find out, and there are plenty of surprises along the way. ~Andrea Reece
The magical, bestselling series from Pseudonymous Bosch, the author of the Secret Series!
Magic is BAD.
As in fake. Cheesy. Unreal. At least, that's what Clay, who has seen one magic show too many, thinks.
When words from his journal appear mysteriously on his school wall as graffiti, he never imagines that magic might be to blame. And when the same graffiti lands him at Earth Ranch, a camp for "troubled" kids on a remote volcanic island, magic is the last thing he expects to find there.
But at Earth Ranch, there is one strange surprise after another, until Clay no longer knows what to expect. Is he really talking to a llama? Did he really see a ghost? What is the scary secret hidden in the abandoned library? The only thing he knows for sure is that behind the clouds of vog (volcanic smog), nothing is as it seems. Can he solve the riddle of Earth Ranch before trouble erupts?
Elusive author Pseudonymous Bosch introduces an extraordinary new series that will have you believing in the unbelievable.