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Speaking from Among the Bones
Cover of Speaking from Among the Bones
Speaking from Among the Bones
A Flavia de Luce Novel
Borrow Borrow
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
From award-winning author Alan Bradley comes the next cozy British mystery starring intrepid young sleuth Flavia de Luce, hailed by USA Today as “one of the most remarkable creations in recent literature.”

 
Eleven-year-old amateur detective and ardent chemist Flavia de Luce is used to digging up clues, whether they’re found among the potions in her laboratory or between the pages of her insufferable sisters’ diaries. What she is not accustomed to is digging up bodies. Upon the five-hundredth anniversary of St. Tancred’s death, the English hamlet of Bishop’s Lacey is busily preparing to open its patron saint’s tomb. Nobody is more excited to peek inside the crypt than Flavia, yet what she finds will halt the proceedings dead in their tracks: the body of Mr. Collicutt, the church organist, his face grotesquely and inexplicably masked. Who held a vendetta against Mr. Collicutt, and why would they hide him in such a sacred resting place? The irrepressible Flavia decides to find out. And what she unearths will prove there’s never such thing as an open-and-shut case.
BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Alan Bradley’s The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches.

Acclaim for Speaking from Among the Bones
 
“[Alan] Bradley scores another success. . . . This series is a grown-up version of Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys and all those mysteries you fell in love with as a child.”The San Diego Union-Tribune
 
“The precocious and irrepressible Flavia . . . continues to delight.”Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
“Fiendishly brilliant . . . Bradley has created an utterly charming cast of characters . . . as quirky as any British mystery fan could hope for.”—Bookreporter
 
“Delightful and entertaining.”San Jose Mercury News
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
From award-winning author Alan Bradley comes the next cozy British mystery starring intrepid young sleuth Flavia de Luce, hailed by USA Today as “one of the most remarkable creations in recent literature.”

 
Eleven-year-old amateur detective and ardent chemist Flavia de Luce is used to digging up clues, whether they’re found among the potions in her laboratory or between the pages of her insufferable sisters’ diaries. What she is not accustomed to is digging up bodies. Upon the five-hundredth anniversary of St. Tancred’s death, the English hamlet of Bishop’s Lacey is busily preparing to open its patron saint’s tomb. Nobody is more excited to peek inside the crypt than Flavia, yet what she finds will halt the proceedings dead in their tracks: the body of Mr. Collicutt, the church organist, his face grotesquely and inexplicably masked. Who held a vendetta against Mr. Collicutt, and why would they hide him in such a sacred resting place? The irrepressible Flavia decides to find out. And what she unearths will prove there’s never such thing as an open-and-shut case.
BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Alan Bradley’s The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches.

Acclaim for Speaking from Among the Bones
 
“[Alan] Bradley scores another success. . . . This series is a grown-up version of Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys and all those mysteries you fell in love with as a child.”The San Diego Union-Tribune
 
“The precocious and irrepressible Flavia . . . continues to delight.”Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
“Fiendishly brilliant . . . Bradley has created an utterly charming cast of characters . . . as quirky as any British mystery fan could hope for.”—Bookreporter
 
“Delightful and entertaining.”San Jose Mercury News
Available formats-
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB eBook
Languages:-
Copies-
  • Available:
    1
  • Library copies:
    1
Levels-
  • ATOS:
    6.0
  • Lexile:
  • Interest Level:
    UG
  • Text Difficulty:
    4 - 5


 
Awards-
Excerpts-
  • Chapter One •ONE•

    Blood dripped from the neck of the severed head and fell in a drizzle of red raindrops, clotting into a ruby pool upon the black and white tiles. The face wore a grimace of surprise, as if the man had died in the middle of a scream. His teeth, each clearly divided from its neighbor by a black line, were bared in a horrible, silent scream.

    I couldn’t take my eyes off the thing.

    The woman who proudly held the gaping head at arm’s length by its curly blue-­black hair was wearing a scarlet dress—­almost, but not quite, the color of the dead man’s blood.

    To one side, a servant with downcast eyes held the platter upon which she had carried the head into the room. Seated on a wooden throne, a matron in a saffron dress leaned forward in square-­jawed pleasure, her hands clenched into fists on the arms of her chair as she took a good look at the grisly trophy. Her name was Herodias, and she was the wife of the king.

    The younger woman, the one clutching the head, was—at least, according to the historian Flavius Josephus—named Salome. She was the stepdaughter of the king, whose name was Herod, and Herodias was her mother.

    The detached head, of course, belonged to John the Baptist.

    I remembered hearing the whole sordid story not more than a month ago when Father read aloud the Second Lesson from the back of the great carved wooden eagle which served as the lectern at St. Tancred’s.

    On that winter morning I had gazed up, transfixed, just as I was gazing now, at the stained-­glass window in which this fascinating scene was depicted.

    Later, during his sermon, the vicar had explained that in Old Testament times, our blood was thought to contain our lives.

    Of course!

    Blood!

    Why hadn’t I thought of it before?

    “Feely,” I said, tugging at her sleeve, “I have to go home.”

    My sister ignored me. She peered closely at the music book as, in the dusky shadows of the fading light, her fingers flew like white birds over the keys of the organ.

    Mendelssohn’s Wie gross ist des Allmächt’gen Güte.

    “ ‘How great are the works of the Almighty,’ ” she told me it meant.

    Easter was now less than a week away and Feely was trying to whip the piece into shape for her official debut as organist of St. Tancred’s. The flighty Mr. Collicutt, who had held the post only since last summer, had vanished suddenly from our village without explanation and Feely had been asked to step into his shoes.

    St. Tancred’s went through organists like a python goes through white mice. Years ago, there had been Mr. Taggart, then Mr. Denning. It was now Mr. Collicutt’s kick at the cat.

    “Feely,” I said. “It’s important. There’s something I have to do.”

    Feely jabbed one of the ivory coupling buttons with her thumb and the organ gave out a roar. I loved this part of the piece: the point where it leaps in an instant from sounding like a quiet sea at sunset to the snarl of a jungle animal.

    When it comes to organ music, loud is good—­at least to my way of thinking.

    I tucked my knees up under my chin and huddled back into the corner of the choir stall. It was obvious that Feely was going to slog her way through to the end come hell or high water, and I would simply have to wait it out.

    I looked at my surroundings but there wasn’t much to see. In the feeble glow of the single bulb above the music rack, Feely and I might as well have been castaways on a tiny raft...
About the Author-
  • Alan Bradley is the New York Times bestselling author of many short stories, children’s stories, newspaper columns, and the memoir The Shoebox Bible. His first Flavia de Luce novel, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, received the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger Award, the Dilys Award, the Arthur Ellis Award, the Agatha Award, the Macavity Award, and the Barry Award, and was nominated for the Anthony Award. His other Flavia de Luce novels are The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, A Red Herring Without MustardI Am Half-Sick of ShadowsSpeaking from Among the Bones, The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches, As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust, Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d, and The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place, as well as the ebook short story “The Curious Case of the Copper Corpse.”
Reviews-
  • Publisher's Weekly

    Starred review from November 26, 2012
    Memorable, often funny prose complements the crafty plot of Bradley’s fifth Flavia de Luce novel (after 2011’s I Am Half-Sick of Shadows). The year 1951 marks the 500th anniversary of the death of St. Tancred, who gave his name to 11-year-old Flavia’s local church in the village of Bishop’s Lacey. That the occasion will include the opening of the saint’s tomb excites Flavia, whose curiosity about the excavation leads her to find the body of a murder victim. The precocious and irrepressible Flavia (who was booted from the Girl Guides for “an excess of high spirits”) continues to delight. Portraying a 11-year-old as a plausible sleuth and expert in poisons is no mean feat, but Bradley makes it look easy. The reader never loses sight of Flavia’s youth, but also never wonders at the likelihood that someone with her qualities exists. Agent: Denise Bukowski, the Bukowski Agency.

  • Kirkus

    December 1, 2012
    Irrepressible Flavia de Luce, the self-taught whiz kid who adores cyanide and has a soft spot for strychnine, confronts lead poisoning. To celebrate St. Tancred's quincentennial, the vicar has asked permission from the diocese to open the holy man's tomb and have his remains present at the feast. Naturally, 11-year-old Flavia, who loves corpses the way other girls her age love butterflies and unicorns, mounts her bicycle, Gladys, and races to the church to be first in line to see the remains. The vicar, the diggers and Flavia are aghast when the first corpse they come upon belongs to Mr. Collicutt, the church organist, who died with a gas mask on and a bit of ruffle at his throat. Inspector Hewitt is at a loss, but Flavia has stepped up to crime-solving before (I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, 2011, etc.). Despite the distressing news that the debts of her father, the colonel, so exceed his income that Buckshaw, the family home, must be put on the market, Flavia conscientiously collects blood dabs; discovers love rivals in the Ladies Altar Guild; meets Magistrate Ridley-Smith's son, locked away in the upper reaches of Bogmore Hall, who mistakes Flavia for her long-gone mother, Harriet; discovers a tunnel leading from the cemetery to St. Tancred's crypt; and consults with private eye Adam Sowerby, who knows that some Latin marginalia in an ancient text and plant lore gleaned from herbalist Mad Meg are important clues. Then there's nothing more to do than call Inspector Hewitt into the study and explain everything to him. But can young Flavia, who can deal with even grand-scale mayhem, cope with her father's pronouncement on the very last page? The Flavia bandwagon rolls on: Not only will she star in five more novels, but she'll also shine in several made-for-television films.

    COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  • Booklist

    December 15, 2012
    Twelve-year-old Flavia de Luce is inordinately interested in death and passionate about poisons. When she's feeling blue, she thinks about cyanide, since its color reflects her mood. She also has a penchant for finding corpses and an extraordinary ability to ferret out the stories behind their untimely deaths. Here she is the first to espy the body of St. Tancred's Church organist Crispin Collicutt during the excavation of the eponymous saint's remains to mark his quincentennial, in 1951. Flavia also must deal with a crisis at home when her widowed father is forced to put the family estate, Buckshaw, up for sale. And while uncovering motives, Flavia also unearths a number of local families' secrets, including some involving her late mother. Bradley's Flavia cozies, set in the English countryside, have been a hit from the start, and this fifth in the series continues to charm and entertain, as Flaviaso intellectually mature yet socially unschooledtakes advantage of being able to go about unnoticed because of her youth. A final cliff-hanger guarantees interest in the next installment.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

  • Bookreporter

    Acclaim for Speaking from Among the Bones "[Alan] Bradley scores another success. . . . This series is a grown-up version of Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys and all those mysteries you fell in love with as a child."--The San Diego Union-Tribune "The precocious and irrepressible Flavia . . . continues to delight."--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Fiendishly brilliant . . . Bradley has created an utterly charming cast of characters . . . as quirky as any British mystery fan could hope for."

  • San Jose Mercury News "Delightful and entertaining."
  • The New York Times Book Review, on A Red Herring Without Mustard "Every Flavia de Luce novel is a reason to celebrate."--USA Today "Delightful."--The Boston Globe, on The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie "Utterly beguiling."--People (four stars), on The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag "Irresistibly appealing."
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Speaking from Among the Bones
A Flavia de Luce Novel
Alan Bradley
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