Showing results by narrator "Amy McAllister" in All Categories

Tabitha Plimtock lives in a house at the very edge of the world. She is a go-getter - that is, a dogsbody forced to go and get things - for her nasty relatives Gower, Gristle, Bertha and Cousin Wilbur. One of Tabitha’s endless chores involves descending the cliff face, via a net that hangs from the back of the house, to collect eggs, nuts and other things from the inhabitants of the wall. When rumours begin to circulate of monsters climbing from the base to gobble up unsuspecting wall-dwellers, Tabitha is worried for all her friends on the wall.

Empathetic and highly sensitive, Alice reads other people’s moods in a heartbeat—she sees both the worst and the best in everyone without them having to say a word. But growing up, Alice’s gift marks her out as disruptive, an oddity. She and her brothers live in dread of their mother’s unpredictable temper, of whether there will be food in the house, or bills paid. And despite her being desperate to find her own way in the world, she is instead pulled tighter into the embrace of the family she feels so ambivalent about—a family even Alice can’t always see the best in.