The Ghosts of Heaven

A Printz Honor Book from the author of Midwinterblood: "This complex masterpiece is for sophisticated readers of any age. Haunting." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Timeless, beautiful, and haunting, spirals connect the four episodes of The Ghosts of Heaven, the mesmerizing new novel from Printz Award winner Marcus Sedgwick. They are there in prehistory, when a girl picks up a charred stick and makes the first written signs; there tens of centuries later, hiding in the treacherous waters of Golden Beck that take Anna, who people call a witch; there in the halls of a Long Island hospital at the beginning of the twentieth century, where a mad poet watches the oceans and knows the horrors it hides; and there in the far future, as an astronaut faces his destiny on the first spaceship sent from earth to colonize another world. Each of the characters in these mysterious linked stories embarks on a journey of discovery and survival; carried forward through the spiral of time, none will return to the same place.

This title has Common Core connections.

"At once prosaic and wondrously metaphysical, Sedgwick's novel will draw teens in and invite them to share in the awe-inspiring (and sometimes terrifying) order and mystery that surround us all." —School Library Journal (starred review)

"Sedgwick is one of the most sophisticated, thought-provoking voices in YA novels, and like his Printz winning Midwinterblood, this presents a story told in pieces over a span of centuries." ―Booklist (starred review)

"Readers who like untangling puzzles will enjoy parsing the threads knitting together this corkscrew of tales." ―Publishers Weekly