The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

Author: Grant, Helen

Brand: Penguin

Binding: paperback

Number Of Pages: 352

Release Date: 02-06-2009

Part Number: 9780141325736

Details: Product Description


Shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, Helen Grant's first teen novel The Vanishing of Katharina Linden follows a misfit teenager as she attempts to unravel the mystery of several strange disappearances in the small town of Bad Münstereifel. The Vanishing of Katharina Linden bridges the world of the traditional Grimm fairytale with the darker world of Angela Carter's adult fairytales. On the day Katharina Linden disappears, Pia is the last person to see her. Terror is spreading through the town. How could a ten-year-old girl vanish in a place where everybody knows everybody else? Pia is determined to find out what happened to Katharina. But then the next girl disappears. . . 'For something so chilling, it is terrific entertainment' Sunday Times 'Grant's splendid debut...is a feast of treats and creeps. Wonderful' Guardian 'A strange, haunting modern fairy tale' John Connolly, author of The Book of Lost Things The setting of the small German town of Bad Münstereifel, in Helen Grant's debut novel The Vanishing of Katharina Linden, is based on her own experience of emigrating there from England as a child. Her other darkly thrilling young adult novels, The Glass Demon and Wish Me Dead, are also available from Penguin.


Review


"Both a wonderful first novel, and a strange, haunting modern fairytale, The Vanishing of Katharina Linden is that rare beast: a book that reawakens in adults the childhood terror of the bogeyman, and confirms for children that the world is an infinitely stranger place than adults might like to pretend . . ." —John Connolly,
New York Times author of
The Reapers

"The Vanishing of Katharina Linden is a stunning debut with a richly evoked setting, a smart sympathetic heroine, and the best opening line for a novel I've ever read.  Helen Grant conjures a tale of evil in rural Germany that would make the Brothers Grimm jealous!' —Rick Riordan,
New York Times author of the Percy Jackson & The Olympians series

"Dark and deadly as the original Grimm’s German folktales, The Vanishing of Katharina Linden hides its menace behind the exquisitely charming narrator, Pia, an unforgettable child of the first order." —Keith Donohue, author of
The Stolen Child and
Angels of Destruction


About the Author


Helen Grant was born in London. She read Classics at St Hugh's College, Oxford, and then worked in marketing for ten years in order to fund her love of travelling. In 2001 she and her family moved to Bad Münstereifel in Germany, and it was exploring the legends of this beautiful town that inspired her to write her first novel. She now lives in Brussels with her husband, her two children and a small German cat.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.


Chapter One    


My life might have been so different, had I not been known as the girl whose grandmother exploded. And had I not been born in Bad Munstereifel. If we had lived in the city--well, I'm not saying the event would have gone unnoticed, but the fuss would probablyonly have lasted a week before public interest moved elsewhere. Besides, in a city you are anonymous; the chances of being picked out as Kristel Kolvenbach's granddaughter would be virtually zero. But in a small town--well, small towns everywhere are rife withgossip, but in Germany they raise it to an art form.  

I remember my hometown as a place with a powerful sense of community, which was sometimes comforting and sometimes stifling. The passing of the seasons was marked by festivals that the whole town attended: Kareval in February, the cherry fair in the summer,the St. Martin's Day procession in November. At each one I saw the same faces: our neighbors from the Heisterbacher Strasse, the parents who gathered at the school gate every lunchtime, the ladies who served in the local bakery. If my family went out to dinnerin the evening we were quite likely to be served by the woman my mother had chatted to in the post office that morning, and at the next table wou

EAN: 9780141325736

Package Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.0 x 0.9 inches

Languages: English