Here’s a detective story with a difference. Eliot is twelve – and he thinks outside the box. He can’t help it. Numbers are his thing – and letters. So when ‘the biggest mystery that struck our school in the history of the world’ needs to be solved, Eliot is the one to call on.
But this time the solution doesn’t lie in the real world (or in the ‘real’ world of the story). Instead, the solution lies inside the book itself – only it’s locked away in a series of puzzles and palindromes.
Can you spot the hidden clues and find the culprit?
Paupers
by Mary Chapman
‘What kind of place is this, where families are kept apart and a simple act of kindness is punished?’
Lydia Maddison and her family have nowhere to go. Their father has left them – and left them with nothing.
So begins their time at the workhouse, as paupers, in Victorian England.
It’s a hard way to live: families are separated, talking is forbidden and there is little food and plenty of hard work.
Lydia’s son Tom and his sister Rose need to summon all their strength and ingenuity to survive – especially as Rose has a baby of her own to look after.
What does the future hold for the Maddison family?
The Secret Message Page 5