Strangeworlds Travel Agency: Volume 1 - Softcover

Lapinski, L. D.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1534483527 ISBN 13: 9781534483521

Verlag: Aladdin, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

Perfect for fans of The Train to Impossible Places and Nevermoor, this “utterly delightful” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) middle grade fantasy follows a young girl who uses a travel agency’s magical suitcases to travel to different worlds.

When twelve-year-old Flick Hudson accidentally ends up in the Strangeworlds Travel Agency, she uncovers a fantastic secret: there are hundreds of other worlds just steps away from hers. All you have to do to visit them is just jump into the right suitcase. Then Flick gets the invitation of a lifetime: join Strangeworlds’s magical travel society and explore other worlds.

But, unbeknownst to Flick, the world at the very center of it all, a city called Five Lights, is in danger. Buildings and even streets are mysteriously disappearing. And when Flick realizes what’s going on, she must race against time, travelling through unchartered worlds, to find a way to fix Five Lights before it collapses into nothingness—and takes her world with it.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

L. D. Lapinski lives just outside Sherwood Forest with her family, a lot of books, and a cat called Hector.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1


There have always been places in our world where magic gathers.

You can see it, if you look close enough. You might see an ancient horse and cart passing down a modern main street; or a cobbled alleyway that people walk into, but never out of. Now and again, you might see it in a person—someone who looks like they’ve stepped straight out of an old photograph. Or, perhaps, someone whose bag seems to hover off the ground catches your eye in a coffee shop. And when you look again they, and their bag, have disappeared.

And, occasionally, you see magic in shops.

Squashed between brand name stores and fancy displays, the shops soaked in magic are never eye-catching, or ostentatious. Their windows are stained with dirt and dust, and sometimes their signs have peeled away so much that it looks as though ghost letters are trying to work their way through. Magic does not wish to be noticed, you see. And most people are happy to pretend it does not exist.

The Strangeworlds Travel Agency was very much like a magical shop should be.

The leaded windows were dirty and cracked. There was peeling paint on the front door and it hardly ever seemed to be open. However, there was one element of the shop that refused to fade into the background: the sign over the window. It was always clearly painted, in silky gold letters embellished with black against a ruby-red background. There was one globe at the beginning of the sign and another at the end. The shop was out of its time, for certain, and yet the name was blazoned for all to see.

In the time between the agency opening almost one hundred and fifty years ago and the summer everything changed, the only thing that altered about the frontage was the globes—they were repainted occasionally, to reflect the shifting borders of various countries.

So, a change was overdue. And it was a new visitor coming into Strangeworlds that ultimately saved the business.

As well as other things.

Jonathan Mercator was working. At least, that’s what he would claim to be doing, if you asked him. What he was actually doing was sitting at the shop desk, ankles crossed on the surface as he leaned back in his chair, reading.

A number of open journals lay on the desk beside his shoes, and the sound of several out-of-sync clocks, ticking to their own distinct rhythms, filled the otherwise silent air. Jonathan paid them no attention.

It was going to be, by his standards, a very busy day.

A shadow crossed in front of the large bay window. And then it passed again, this time pausing in the region of the front door. After a moment the door opened, scraping over the swollen floorboards, and a boy came in, curling not so much his lip as his entire face at the sight of the shop interior.

Jonathan raised his eyes over the edge of his novel and watched the boy with interest.

“Um…” The boy looked around. “This isn’t Games Warehouse, is it?”

The interest slipped from Jonathan’s face like water vanishing through a sieve, and he gazed around in false astonishment. “Isn’t it? Whatever gave you that idea?”

The boy pulled his phone out. “It’s supposed to be here.”

“Ah, well then. If your phone says this is the place, it must be correct. Don’t trust your own eyes, whatever you do.” Jonathan reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and fished out a very small magnifying glass. It was made of a bronze metal, with a thick glass lens. He tossed it at the boy, who caught it uncertainly. “Have a good look around, make absolutely certain, why don’t you?”

“What’s this for?”

“Humor me.”

The boy frowned and lifted the magnifying glass to his face. “What am I supposed to see? Does this even work? Everything’s blurry.” He put the glass back on the desk. “What sort of place is this?” His loud voice was absorbed by the room, so the sound of it fell rather flat.

Jonathan sighed, picking up the magnifying glass and putting it back in his pocket. “The sign over the window wasn’t enough of a clue? We’re a travel agency.”

The boy snorted. “All right, maybe it does say travel agency over the door, but you don’t even have a computer.”

Jonathan looked at his desk, before taking his legs off it. As well as the pile of journals, there was a half-drunk mug of tea and a plate with the crumby remains of toast and peanut butter still on it. He put the novel he was reading down, fanned open to save the page. “What on earth would I need a computer for?”

“Er… don’t you need to book flights? Arrange holidays?”

Jonathan smiled. A smile full of secrets. “I’m not that sort of travel agent.”

The boy frowned. “What do you do, then?”

Jonathan pushed his glasses up his nose and folded his hands, his fingers interlocking like gears.

But he was saved the trouble of answering by the suitcase to his left springing open.

Perhaps, before things become too complicated, we should clarify precisely why this young man was so skeptical about the Strangeworlds Travel Agency.

First of all, the visitor was correct in pointing out that the place was a technological relic. Indeed, the most modern item in Jonathan Mercator’s possession was a typewriter from the 1960s. He liked to type passive-aggressive notes on it and hide them in library books. The desk the typewriter sat upon wouldn’t have been out of place in the office of a Victorian headmaster, and even Jonathan’s clothes looked old. You got the feeling someone might well have died in some of his tweed suits. They were not the sort of thing you’d expect an eighteen-year-old to be wearing.

Then there was the fact that the travel agency had no fancy posters of Disneyland, or the Algarve, or anywhere else you might have wanted to visit. There were no posters at all, in fact. Only a few globes and atlases. And something that was like a globe, except the sphere was shaped more like a pear than a ball.

And then there were the suitcases.

They filled an entire wall of the travel agency, sitting in neat wooden slots that had been built right into the wall. The shelves went from floor to ceiling, each suitcase snug in a niche of its own, its handle waiting to be grasped and pulled down. There were more suitcases stacked between two fireside armchairs like a coffee table, others neatly arranged in piles against the far wall and a couple leaning against Jonathan’s desk.

You could count at least fifty of them stacked in the wall, and not a single one was alike. There were leather ones, heavy cardboard ones, shining crocodile hide ones, and some made of skins that would make even the most learned of zoologists scratch their heads. Some had stamps on their edges, some had splashes of paint, and at least a dozen had paper labels tied on to their handles with string.

The Strangeworlds Travel Agency looked more like a lost and found office, or a rather specialist antique shop, than a travel agency. So it was hardly surprising that the boy was suspicious—even before the suitcase sprang open.

At the sound of the suitcase bursting open, Jonathan turned around, startled, his wood-and-leather swivel chair screeching on its casters. The suitcase lid flew back...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Aladdin
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2022
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1534483527
• ISBN 13: 9781534483521
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 400
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; Utrecht; 3584 AA; Niederlande