[Blog/Bookstagram/BookTok Tour] The Deadly Daylight by Ash Harrier
Author: Ash Harrier
Pub. Date: March 5, 2024
Publisher: Holiday House
Formats: Hardcover, eBook
Pages: 272
Find it: Goodreads, https://books2read.com/THE-DEADLY-DAYLIGHT
12-year-old Alice has a hard time making friends. Maybe it's because she works in a funeral home and receives messages from the dead.
While the kids at school taunt her and call her “Alice in Zombieland," Alice England finds refuge at her father’s funeral home, where the dead tell her stories. As she arranges the deceased’s personal mementos, an item will hum with meaning–resonance–and Alice will see the story of their life.
When she "meets" George Devenish, a man who died of a rare sunlight allergy, Alice knows George was murdered. Her only leads are George’s niece, “Violet the Vampire,” who shares her uncle’s allergy and a friendly, but secretive boy named Cal.
As a determined Alice investigates, she is surprised to find Violet and Cal become more than just suspects, but allies—maybe even friends. However, Alice soon finds navigating her first real friendships might be harder than solving a murder.
Clever humor and twisty clues abound in this cozy middle grade mystery about a group of misfits finding courage in the truth and friendship in each other. Delightful, dark, and quirky, The Deadly Daylight is perfect for fans of Nancy Drew and Winterhouse.
My Book Review: Coming Soon
About Ash Harrier:
Ash Harrier lives in Perth, Western Australia. She is an Ambassador for the Books in Homes Australia charity, which helps children in disadvantaged circumstances build their home libraries. Ash has a great fondness for puzzles, scientific facts, birds and the smell of dried tea. Some of her favorite pastimes are reading, daydreaming and spending time in the garden with her small flock of hens.
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Excerpt:
The Deadly Deadlight
By Ash Harrier
Excerpt for Rockstar Book Tours
Excerpt from The Deadly Deadlight / Text copyright © 2022 by Ash Harrier. Reproduced with permission from Holiday House Publishing Inc. All rights reserved.
one
The Resonance of Trinkets
ALICE smoothed down the dead woman’s collar. Her dad often missed that detail. He prepared and dressed the bodies, but didn’t always notice things like misbuttoned blouses or crooked spectacles.
There were two items for Alice to arrange. They were inside an envelope with the name Edna Macintosh handwritten on the front. Alice slipped out a pair of square-cut diamond earrings set in silver, and a photograph of a man dressed in clothing from the 1970s—flared trousers and a shirt with a wide collar—held in a black frame.
She removed a gold stud from Edna’s left ear and replaced it with one of the ugly diamonds. But when she came to the right earlobe, there was no earring to replace. Managing the pen awkwardly in her latex gloves, she made a note about it on the envelope. Her dad would need to mention it to Edna’s next of kin, as grieving families sometimes made wild accusations when jewelry was misplaced.
Alice tried to insert the diamond earring, but it wouldn’t go in. Edna’s earring must have been missing for a while, and the pierced skin had grown over before she died. Alice considered her options. She could cut off the earring’s stem and use costume glue to stick the diamond to Edna’s ear. But that was risky. Occasionally the glue failed. All it would take was a grieving guest to stroke Edna’s hair and the earring might fall off. A mishap like that could ruin the funeral.
And what if the relatives changed their minds and asked for the earrings to be returned? Alice didn’t want to be responsible for any damage if someone noticed dear Granny’s earrings were real diamonds and wanted them back.
Her only option was to re‐pierce Edna’s earlobe. Piercing an ear was new to Alice but she didn’t want to fetch her dad to do it. He had already spent long hours embalming Edna, then bending her arm into a suitable position to hold the photo frame. It would be silly to call him for such a simple task.
“This shouldn’t hurt at all,” Alice assured Edna, because you couldn’t be too careful.
The earring stem went easily through Edna’s earlobe, like pushing a toothpick into an olive. Alice surveyed her work. Not bad. It was slightly off-center compared with the left one, but no one would notice.
Now for the photo. Sometimes dead people’s possessions shared stories with Alice. Not always, but every so often an object put a little story into her head. Alice called these items resonant—an excellent word she had discovered when she was about nine, meaning anything that gave an ongoing hum. That was what it felt like to Alice—like the item was humming and vibrating with meaning and significance. Sometimes it was just a little sliver of a story; and sometimes it was a full history of the person’s life.
This photograph was resonant.
1 winner will receive a finished copy of THE DEADLY DAYLIGHT, US Only.
Ends March 26th, midnight EST.
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