About this item

Meet Edgar and Allan Poe -- twelve-year-old identical twins, the great-great-great-great-grandnephews of Edgar Allan Poe. They look and act so much alike that they're almost one mischievous, prank-playing boy in two bodies. When their beloved black cat, Roderick Usher, is kidnapped and transported to the Midwest, Edgar and Allan convince their guardians that it's time for a road trip. Along the way, mayhem and mystery ensue, as well as deeper questions: What is the boys' telepathic connection? Is Edgar Allan Poe himself reaching out to them from the Great Beyond? And why has a mad scientist been spying on the Poe family for years?With a mix of literary humor, mystery, a little quantum physics, and fun extras like fortune cookie messages, letters in code, license plate clues -- and playful illustrations thoughout -- this series opener is a perfect choice for smart, funny tweens who love the Time Warp Trio, Roald Dahl, and Lemony Snicket.



About the Author

Gordon McAlpine

Gordon McAlpine has been described by Publisher's Weekly as "a gifted stylist, with clean, clear and muscular prose." A native Californian, McAlpine attended the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at the University of California, Irvine.

In November 2015, Seventh Street Books published McAlpine's literary mystery novel, Woman With a Blue Pencil, about which Publishers Weekly wrote in a starred review: "McAlpine's greatest accomplishment is that the book works both as a conventional mystery story and as a deconstruction of the genre's ideology: whichever strand readers latch on to, the parallel stories pack a brutal punch." Joyce Carol Oates wrote that Woman with a Blue Pencil is a novel, "that Kafka, Borges, and Nabokov, as well as Dashiell Hammett, would have appreciated."

In 2013, Seventh Street Books published Hammett Unwritten to equally enthusiastically reviews. The Gumshoe Review wrote: "Hammett Unwritten tells a story but raises questions about the nature of fiction and those who create it that will stay with you long after you finish the book." Paste Magazine raved: "Hammett Unwritten accomplishes the next-best thing to writing the unwritten--it satisfies the insatiable longing for another Dashiell Hammett novel... In a way far more satisfying than the truth could ever be, it also answers the nagging question of why Hammett never wrote another book. What's remarkable...is McAlpine's unfailing and seemingly instinctive knowledge of what fans of Hammett--and other famously blocked writers--most want to know.... [It] gives his life the hard-boiled second act it most certainly deserved."

Between 2013 - 2015, Viking published McAlpine's middle grade trilogy of novels, "The Misadventures of Edgar and Allan Poe", which consists of The Tell-Tale Start (2013) , Once Upon a Midnight Eerie (2014) , and The Pet and the Pendulum (2015) . Publishers Weekly referred to the series in a starred review as "Entertaining and original...Endlessly fun and ultimately very satisfying on every level." The audio version of The Tell-Tale Start was selected as Audible.com's Best Children's Book, 2013.

The Los Angeles Times called Mr. McAlpine's first novel, Joy in Mudville (1989) , an "imaginative mix of history, humor and fantasy...fanciful and surprising", and The West Coast Review of Books called it "a minor miracle." Joy in Mudville was re-released in 2012.

The Way of Baseball, Finding Stillness at 95 MPH (2011) , McAlpine's first book of non-fiction, was written in collaboration with Major League All-Star Shawn Green and was published by Simon and Schuster to outstanding reviews.

McAlpine's other novels include The Persistence of Memory (1998) , and Mystery Box (2003) .

Additionally, he has published short stories and book reviews in j



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