The Queen of Ocean Parkway
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
An 11-year-old podcaster-turned-sleuth teams up with the new kid in the building to find their missing neighbor! A captivating adventure perfect for fans of When You Reach Me and Only Murders in the Building.
Eleven-year-old Roya is the superintendent’s kid in her regal Brooklyn apartment building, so she knows pretty much everything there is to know about its residents. An aspiring reporter, she even hosts a secret podcast about the lives of the building’s tenants. It’s a good distraction from the problems in her own life.
But when Katya Petrov, one of her favorite tenants, goes missing, Roya discovers an eerie connection to Grandmother’s Predictions, an antique fortune-telling machine at Coney Island. "Grandmother" has been linked to multiple disappearances in the Petrov family over the last century. Now, with the help of a new friend who’s just moved in, it’s up to Roya to make her own headlines as she searches for Katya and attempts to break the Petrov curse once and for all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As the only child of the superintendent, Roya Alborzi doubts that anyone knows more about the residents and history of their Brooklyn apartment complex on Ocean Parkway than she does. The intrepid 11-year-old, an aspiring investigative journalist, helps her mother maintain the building and hones her observational acumen by reporting the daily goings-on for the 47 (mostly Danish) subscribers of her secret podcast, The Queen of Ocean Parkway, while avoiding the subject of her science teacher father's colon cancer. After overhearing tenants Stefanie Turner and her wife Katya Petrov discussing Katya's family curse and the fortune tied to it, Roya is intrigued—and then alarmed when Katya vanishes 24 hours later. Stefanie explains that Katya's great-grandfather built a Coney Island fortune-telling attraction called Grandmother's Predictions that is linked to decades of mysterious Petrov disappearances. With the help of shy and studious new tenant Amin Lahiri, Roya vows to find Katya and uncover the truth behind the Petrov family curse. Dusted with speculative elements, this cozy and surprising mystery by Tash (A Whole Song and Dance) features appealing and perceptively drawn characters coping with genuinely wrought emotions in a vivid setting. The cast is intersectionally diverse. Ages 8–12.
