My new YA novel, DARK SOULS, was published in the US this week. The novel – the story of Miranda and her brother, Rob, who are both recovering from the scars, physical and psychic, of a car accident – is a mystery set in York, the city in England where I lived for three years. Of course, I made sure to include a scene or two at Bettys Cafe Tea Rooms, which I visited every single week I lived in York – sometimes more than once.
Below is the teaser I wrote for the novel when I first presented the idea to Scholastic. Read the book and let me know what you think …
York, England. December. Mist lingers in the streets. Snow banks up against the city’s Roman walls and around the towering York Minster, one of the great medieval cathedrals of Europe. The river Ouse is icy, gray, and forbidding.
The city of York is the most haunted place on earth: the ghosts of Viking pillagers, Roman soldiers, Catholic martyrs, hanged highwaymen, rebels and cavaliers, victims of the Black Death, and tragic royals all haunt its narrow lanes and half-timbered old buildings.
Two American teenagers arrive in this moody ancient city. Neither of them really want to be here. But although they don’t know it yet, both will fall in love for the first time in York. They’ll also be forced to confront their greatest fears.
In York, they’ll risk losing everything. The parents they love. The people they fall in love with. Their sanity.
Their lives.