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Mary's second adventure as an undercover agent forces her to relive some harrowing childhood experiences as she seeks the identity of a murderer.Mary Quinn is back, now a trusted member of the Agency, the all-female detective unit operating out of Miss Scrimshaw's Academy for Girls. Her new assignment sends her into the grimy underbelly of Victorian London dressed as a poor boy, evoking her own childhood memories of fear, hunger, and constant want. As she insinuates herself into the confidence of several persons of interest, she encounters others in desperate situations and struggles to make a difference without exposing - or losing - her identity. Mary's adventure, which takes place on the building site of the clock tower of the Houses of Parliament, offers a fictional window into a fascinating historical time and place.



About the Author

Y.S. Lee

Y S Lee was born in Singapore, raised in Vancouver and Toronto, and lived for a spell in England. As she completed her PhD in Victorian literature and culture, she began to research a story about a girl detective in 1850s London. The result was her debut novel, The Agency: A Spy in the House. This won the Canadian Children's Book Centre's inaugural John Spray Mystery Award in 2011.The Agency quartet continues with The Body at the Tower and The Traitor and the Tunnel, both of which were nominated for awards. Rivals in the City, coming in February 2015, is the final book in the Agency series. All four books are published by Candlewick Press (US/Canada) and Walker Books (UK/Australia) . The novels have also been translated into French, German, Spanish, Italian, Korean and Turkish.In her previous life as an academic, Ying wrote Masculinity and the English Working Class (Routledge) . She now lives in Kingston, Ontario.She blogs every Wednesday at yslee.com.



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