In Secure

Andrew Pack

From Shelf: Books From Publishers I've Worked For - cockle warmers, tear-jerkers, WTF hair-raisers, I've loved them all

An adventure story set in a prison for children, where the characters are busy fighting their emotional demons when a real one turns up

Imagine being thirteen years old and getting into a car that's going to drive you to a building where you'll be locked up with nine other children. You don't know what they've done, they don't know what you've done. They all seem messed up and scary. All of them have secrets, but none of their secrets are as huge as the one you're hiding from them.

When will you get out? How will you get out? What is it going to be like? You don't know.

All you know is, the next time you wake up, your bedroom door will be locked. Every time you wake up.

Ten children locked up, working out how to cope, how to survive, who to trust and who to avoid.

One of the children has a book of spells, and all of the spells work. They come with a serious price though, because the children aren't the only ones locked up in there, and the other prisoner is much much older, more dangerous, more broken and more desperate than any of them.

This is a story of a struggle to fit in and a struggle to get out. A story packed with secrets and lies, where a touch on your back could be a flirtatious invitation or it could be a home-made shank, a cry in the night can be homesickness or something far far worse.

Magic, theft, fights over pecking order, crushes with a twist and daring jail-breaks. Finding out what makes these children tick, and whether ten broken watches can manage to synchronise together when it really matters.

Imagine "Five Children and It", if the Five Children were juvenile delinquents, and the 'It' was more like Steven King's version. A Young Adult novel, but assuming you ever lived through teenaged years suitable for adults too

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