Deadweather and Sunrise: The Chronicles of Egg, Book 1($10.99Value)

Description

A stunning middle-grade debut--full of heart, humor, and nonstop action It's tough to be thirteen, especially when somebody's trying to kill you. Not that Egg's life was ever easy, growing up on sweaty, pirate-infested Deadweather Island with no company except an incompetent tutor and a pair of unusually violent siblings who hate his guts. But when Egg's father hustles their family off on a mysterious errand to fabulously wealthy Sunrise Island, then disappears with the siblings in a freak accident, Egg finds himself a long-term guest at the mansion of the glamorous Pembroke family and their beautiful, sharp-tongued daughter Millicent. Finally, life seems perfect. Until someone tries to throw him off a cliff. Suddenly, Egg's running for his life in a bewildering world of cutthroat pirates, villainous businessmen, and strange Native legends. The only people who can help him sort out the mystery of why he's been marked for death are Millicent and a one-handed, possibly deranged cabin boy. Come along for the ride. You'll be glad you did. “In this rip-roaring debut . . . Lemony Snicket meets Pirates of the Caribbean, with a sprinkling of Tom Sawyer for good measure.” —Rick Riordan, bestselling author of the Percy Jackson series “The fast-paced swashbuckling will surely satisfy fans of adventure, but it’s really Egg’s narration that makes this pirate story rise above its counterparts . . . Colorful dialogue (including plenty of piratespeak) and a fully realized setting that will have readers wiping the sea spray from their brows round out this delightful nautical yarn.” — BCCB , starred review “Full of action. . . a great read.”— Time for Kids “[A] swashbuckling story.” — School Library Journal “…Rodkey combines humor and adventure in a story full of cruise ships, wild pigs, treasure maps, and constant peril.” — Publishers Weekly   “This introduction to the Chronicles of Egg series is pure fun.” — Booklist   “This promising new series starts out strong with a story filled to brim with pirates, treasure, intrigue and swashbuckling suspense . . . Egg’s first-person account is compelling, and the dialogue and vivid setting, as well as the full cast of quirky characters, make it easy to get lost in this adventure.” — Kirkus Reviews Geoff Rodkey grew up in Freeport, Illinois, a place with no ugly fruit plantations, volcanoes, or gainfully employed pirates, although someone did briefly want to kill him when he was a teenager. He currently lives with his family on an island just off the coast of North America. He has not been to sea since an ill-fated kite fishing expedition in the Florida Keys encountered such choppy waters that his nine-year-old son threw up on his four-year-old son's head while the author was preoccupied with trying to help his seven-year-old son barf over the gunwale. This is his first book. Normal0falsefalsefalseMicrosoftInternetExplorer4st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }/* Style Definitions */table.MsoNormalTable{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;mso-style-noshow:yes;mso-style-parent:"";mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;mso-para-margin:0in;mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination:widow-orphan;font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-ansi-language:#0400;mso-fareast-language:#0400;mso-bidi-language:#0400;} 1 DEADWEATHER Chapter 1 Nobody lived on Deadweather but us and the pirates. It wasn’t hard to understand why. For one thing, the weather was atrocious. Eleven months out of twelve, it was brutally hot and humid, with no wind at all, so on a bad day the air felt like a hot, soggy blanket smothering you from all sides. And the other month was September, which meant hurricanes. Then there was the volcano. It hadn’t actually blown in ages, but it belched smoke and shook the earth enough to scare away anybody who might’ve overlooked the pirates and the weather. The only reason it didn’t scare me, even though plenty of things do, was because I’d been born and raised halfway up its slope and didn’t know any different. That’s how I felt about the pirates, too. There were two kinds on Deadweather: the normal ones, who hung around down in Port Scratch, drinking and getting into knife fights whenever they weren’t off raiding Cartager gold ships; and the busted-down, broken ones, who’d lost too many limbs or eyes or organs to crew a ship, but not enough to kill them outright. A few of those stayed in the Scratch, patching together a living in the taverns and the gun shops, but most of them hobbled up the mountain to work for Dad on the ugly fruit plantation. I don’t know what he paid them—it couldn’t have been much, because we didn’t have much. But I guess it was enough, since none of them ever staged a mutiny or tried to kill us all in our sleep. They slept down in the barracks and mostly kept to themselves in the orchards, except for Quint the house pirate, who cooked for us and did some occasional sewing. Dad had