About this item

Slip behind the Iron Curtain into a world of smoke, secrets, and lies in this stunning novel where someone is always listening and nothing is as it seems.Noah Keller has a pretty normal life, until one wild afternoon when his parents pick him up from school and head straight for the airport, telling him on the ride that his name isn't really Noah and he didn't really just turn eleven in March. And he can't even ask them why - not because of his Astonishing Stutter, but because asking questions is against the newly instated rules. (Rule Number Two: Don't talk about serious things indoors, because Rule Number One: They will always be listening) . As Noah - now "Jonah Brown" - and his parents head behind the Iron Curtain into East Berlin, the rules and secrets begin to pile up so quickly that he can hardly keep track of the questions bubbling up inside him: Who, exactly, is listening - and why? When did his mother become fluent in so many languages? And what really happened to the parents of his only friend, Cloud-Claudia, the lonely girl who lives downstairs? In an intricately plotted novel full of espionage and intrigue, friendship and family, Anne Nesbet cracks history wide open and gets right to the heart of what it feels like to be an outsider in a world that's impossible to understand.



About the Author

Anne Nesbet

Anne Nesbet writes books for kids and watches a lot of silent films. She lives near San Francisco with her husband, several daughters, and one irrepressible dog. THE CABINET OF EARTHS (HarperCollins 2012) is her first novel; it tells the story of twelve-year-old Maya Davidson's tangle with some very old magic in Paris. Houses with bronze salamanders for door handles, statues that look too much like Maya's own worried face, a man wearing sunglasses to hide his radiant purple eyes-nothing is what it seems. To keep her family safe, Maya must make new friends (a cousin who is so unremarkable, she's actually hard to see; a Bulgarian boy named Valko who has practice not-fitting-in all over the world) and take on the magical underworld of Paris. More adventures of Maya and Valko appear in A BOX OF GARGOYLES, which came out in 2013. You can visit her online at www.annenesbet.com.



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