FICTION · JUVENILE
Tracy Barrett
Tracy Barrett is the author of numerous fiction and nonfiction books for young readers, including the award-winning YA biographical novel, Anna of Byzantium (Delacorte, 1999). Her most recent publications are The 100-Year-Old Secret (Book 1 of “The Sherlock Files,” Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, 2008), The Ancient Chinese World (Oxford University Press, 2005) and On Etruscan Time (Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, 2005). Under contract with Holt are three more novels in “The Sherlock Files” and a young-adult novel with the working title King of Ithaka. Some of her past publications include: Growing Up in Colonial America (The Millbrook Press, 1995); Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, in the series Celebrate the States (Benchmark Books, Marshall Cavendish, 1997-1999); The Trail of Tears: An American Tragedy (Perfection Learning Corporation, 2000); “The Children’s Crusade” (AppleSeeds Magazine, December 2001); and Cold in Summer (Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, 2003). Tracy is Regional Advisor for the Midsouth chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and was awarded the SCBWI Work-in-Progress Grant in 2005. She holds a B.A. from Brown University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. She is married and has two young-adult children. She lives in Nashville, TN, where she teaches at Vanderbilt University. Visit her at www.tracybarrett.com.
Caitlyn O'Malley was a lass, but none would have known it who saw her swaggering along Dublin's narrow cobbled laneways on that misty April afternoon in 1784.
— from Dark of the moon
Most acclaimed
Dark of the moon
Virgil Flowers-tall, lean, late thirties, three times divorced, hair way too long for a cop's-had kicked around for a while before joining the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. First, it was the army and the military police, then the police in St. Paul, and finally Lucas Davenport had brought him into the BCA, promising him, "We'll only give you the hard stuff."He'd been doing the hard stuff for three years now-but never anything like this. In the small town of Bluestem, where everybody knows everybody, a house way up on a ridge explodes into flames, its owner, a man named Judd, trapped inside. There is a lot of reason to hate him, Flowers discovers. Years ago, Judd had perpetrated a scam that'd driven a lot of local farmers out of business, even to suicide. There are also rumors swirling around: of some very dicey activities with other men's wives; of involvement with some nutcase religious guy; of an out-of-wedlock daughter. In fact, Flowers concludes, you'd probably have to dig around to find a person who didn't despise him.And that wasn't even the reason Flowers had come to Bluestem. Three weeks before, there'd been another murder-two, in fact-a doctor and his wife, the doctor found propped up in his backyard, both eyes shot out. There hadn't been a murder in Bluestem in years-and now, suddenly, three? Flowers knows two things: This wasn't a coincidence, and this had to be personal.But just how personal is something even he doesn't realize, and may not find out until too late. Because the next victim . . .may be himself.Filled with the audacious plotting, rich characters, and brilliant suspense that have always made his books "compulsively readable" (Los Angeles Times), Dark of the Moon is vintage Sandford, further proof that he "is in a class of his own" (The Orlando Sentinel).
Anna of Byzantium
1999
In the eleventh century the teenage princess Anna Comnena fights for her birthright, the throne to the Byzantine Empire, which she fears will be taken from her by her younger brother John because he is a boy