Ghosts of Shanghai
3 total works
J G Ballard's Empire of the Sun meets Susan Hill's The Woman in Black in a compelling teen thriller ...
Ruby - a Western girl who feels more Chinese than English - and her friend Charlie must follow the Yangtze hundreds of miles upriver, travelling by Chinese junk and rogue steamer, through bandit and ghost haunted countryside - doggedly tracking Moonface as he spirits Charlie's sister Fei off to his home village. Everything is in flux around them: civil war pulsing, with Nationalists, Communists and warlord bandits struggling for control. The river rises and falls, villages spring up and are gone again.
Ruby and Charlie brave a shipwreck and a gunbattle and then take a perilous cliff path to Moonface's lair.
A powerful teen thriller with echoes of J G Ballard's Empire of the Sun and Miracles of Life ...
Obsessed with martial arts and ghost stories, Ruby is part of a gang of Chinese and ex-pat children who hide out in ruined White Cloud Temple. But the world of Shanghai in the late 1920s is driven with danger: disease, crime, espionage and revolution are sweeping the streets. And since the death of her younger brother Thomas, Ruby is stalked by another anxiety and fear.
Faced with a series of local hauntings, and armed with a lucky bookshop find - The Almanac of Distant Realms - Ruby forms the Shanghai Ghost Club to hunt down restless spirits. When best friend Faye is kidnapped by the Green Hand, Ruby must trust a mysterious stranger - and face her worst fears - in order to save her friends, and her own life. And in the ensuing fight she will catch a glimpse of the one spirit she has longed to see ...
The secrets that Ruby's father and friends have kept from her are coming back to haunt them all.
'The thing about ghosts is sometimes we create our own. And sometimes they find us, no matter what we do.'
The thrilling conclusion to the Ghosts of Shanghai by the award-winning author of the Mysterium trilogy, for fans of Philip Pullman, Susan Hill and Robin Stevens.
Ruby is on a mission to rescue the boy she loves: Charlie has been swept away in the powerful waters of the River Yangtze. But the world she loves is now broken by danger and fear, and Ruby is lost and surrounded by ghosts.
Can Ruby trust herself, and those around her, to find Charlie and return to Shanghai? Or has she ventured too deep into the realm of spirits?
On an amazing journey down the Yangtze, crossing from one world to the other, Ruby must follow the 'red thread of destiny' to find Charlie and home, before she loses herself . . .