The Shadow in the North (Sally Lockhart Series #2) » (Unabridged, 6 cassettes, 9 hrs. 30 min.)

Best known for the multi-award-winning fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials, British author Philip Pullman is one of our most distinguished writers of children's literature.

The year is 1878, and Sally Lockhart has started her own financial consulting business. When a client loses a fortune in the unexpected collapse of a British shipping firm, Sally is determined to find out why. But as she comes closer to learning the identity of the firm's elusive owner, she discovers that her questions are far from simple and that the answers could cost her life.

Selected Audiobooks for Young Adults (American Library Association)

Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award

Publishers Weekly

Readers first met the intelligent, inquisitive and independent Sally Lockhart in The Ruby in the Smoke. Now comes this second brilliant bauble, perhaps more foreboding and terrifying than the first, thanks to Pullman's care in creating lively, superheroic characters and then, just as heroically, killing them off. Six years after the close of the first book, Sallynow 22 and still galloping over Victorian conventionsis embroiled in high-level business and government fraud; lest this sound dry, there is also a secret weapon (``the shadow'' of the title) under development north of London that, in this setting, is as threatening as a nuclear arsenal. The mystery has many more tangled elements than the first tale, but they are all untangled and quite elegantly tied up; readers will weep at the deeds of true villainy and smile through their tears at the close, as they are offered Sally's radiant look to the future, to unfold in a promised final volume of the trilogy. Ages 12-up. (March)