LoveReading4Kids Says
LoveReading4Kids Says
Shortlisted for The Branford Boase Award 2019 | Shortlisted for the Costa Children's Book Award 2018 | January 2019 Debut of the Month |
Stinging with drama, action and, above all, a relentless sense of urgency, this ruthlessly remarkable debut sees an indomitable Jewess go undercover.
When Sarah’s mother is shot dead, there’s no time for sentimentality, no time to grieve. Sarah must press on, “keep moving”, for her survival depends on it. She joins forces with the Captain, a man she discovers is part of the resistance against the Nazis, and Sarah will spy for him. To this end, she adopts a new identity. She becomes Ursula Haller, the “good little dumb National Socialist Monster”. The Captain secures her a place at a school attended by the daughters of top Nazis, and here she must befriend Elsa, whose father is a leading scientist. The conditions at the school are repugnantly cruel, but Sarah is sharp and strong beyond her fifteen years. Though her childhood was curtailed by her actress mother, and then by the Nazis, she’s defiantly resilient, and infiltrates the grand home and secret lab of a top SS scientist. Compelling and quick-paced, the writing - like Sarah’s character - is indelibly raw, and this is a fiercely gripping read.
The Costa Judges said : ‘A compelling, darkly thrilling debut - tense, cinematic and brilliant.’
Joanne Owen
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About
Orphan Monster Spy Synopsis
Her name is Sarah. She's blonde, blue-eyed, and Jewish in 1939 Germany. And her act of resistance is about to change the world.
After her mother is shot at a checkpoint, fifteen-year-old Sarah meets a mysterious man with an ambiguous accent, a suspiciously bare apartment, and a lockbox full of weapons. He's part of the secret resistance against the Third Reich, and he needs Sarah to hide in plain sight at a school for the daughters of top Nazi brass, posing as one of them. If she can befriend the daughter of a key scientist and get invited to her house, she might be able to steal the blueprints to a bomb that could destroy the cities of Western Europe. Nothing could prepare Sarah for her cutthroat schoolmates, and soon she finds herself in a battle for survival unlike any she'd ever imagined. But anyone who underestimates this innocent-seeming girl does so at their peril. She may look sweet, but she's the Nazis' worst nightmare.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9780451478757 |
| Publication date: |
19th February 2019 |
| Author: |
Matt Killeen |
| Publisher: |
Speak an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
432 pages |
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Press Reviews
Matt Killeen Press Reviews
“Set in a brilliant, terrifyingly-imagined third reich Germany, Orphan Monster Spy's Sarah sits alongside Lyra and True Grit's Mattie Ross as one of the best spiky, clever, daring, unyielding protagonists I've read.” Martin Stewart, author of the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize-longlisted Riverkeep
“Orphan Monster Spy delivers dark, disturbing truths, wrapped tight in a story that twists turns and threatens to stab you in the back. Both unforgiving and brilliant - a book to leave you breathless.” Non Pratt, author
Author
About Matt Killeen
Matt Killeen was born in Birmingham, in the UK, back when trousers were wide and everything was brown. Several careers beckoned, some involving laser guns and guitars, before he finally attempted to make a living as an advertising copywriter and a largely ignored music and sports journalist. He now writes for the world's best loved toy company, as it wasn't possible to be an X-wing pilot.
Orphan Monster Spy is his first novel.
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