Warren the 13th and The All-Seeing Eye: A Novel - Hardcover

Buch 1 von 3: Warren the 13th

Del Rio, Tania

 
9781594748035: Warren the 13th and The All-Seeing Eye: A Novel
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1594748039 ISBN 13: 9781594748035
Verlag: Quirk Books, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

A beautifully illustrated, action-packed middle grade adventure in the spirit of Edward Gorey and Lemony Snicket.

Warren the 13th is the lone bellhop, valet, groundskeeper, and errand boy of his family’s ancient hotel. The strange, shadowy mansion is full of crooked corridors and mysterious riddles—and it just might be home to a magical treasure known as the All-Seeing Eye. But if Warren is going to find the hidden treasure, he’ll need to solve several other mysteries first: What is the strange creature lurking in the hotel boiler room? Who is the ghostly girl creeping around the garden’s hedge maze? And why is the hotel’s only guest covered in bandages? Full of puzzles, secret codes, outrageous inventions, and hundreds of intricate illustrations, Warren the 13th and The All-Seeing Eye will delight and confound readers of all ages.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Tania del Rio is the author of the Warren the 13th series. A professional comic book writer and artist, her clients include Archie Comics, Dark Horse, and Marvel. She is best known for her work writing and drawing a 42-issue run of Sabrina the Teenage Witch. She lives in Los Angeles. Will Staehle is the illustrator and designer of the Warren the 13th series, plus dozens of award-winning book jackets. Print magazine named him one of the Top Twenty under Thirty New Visual Artists. He lives in Seattle, WA.

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Meet Warren the 13th, a cursed 12-year-old Victorian bellhop who’s terribly unlucky . . . yet perpetually optimistic, hard-working, and curious. Orphan Warren’s pride and joy is his family’s hotel, but he’s been miserable ever since his evil Aunt Anaconda took over the management. Anaconda believes a mysterious treasure known as the All-Seeing Eye is hidden somewhere on the grounds, and she’ll do anything to find it. If Warren wants to preserve his family’s legacy, he’ll need to find the treasure first―if the hotel’s many strange and wacky guests don’t beat him to it! This middle-grade adventure features gorgeous two-color illustrations on every page and a lavish two-column Victorian design that will pull young readers into a spooky and delightful mystery.

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Chapter 1

Warren the 13th tiptoed across the roof of the Warren Hotel, and the old slate tiles clattered like bones. A crisp autumn wind snapped at his back, threatening to knock him off balance, but he kept going. A fall from the top of an eight-story building was the least of his worries. He had a chimney to repair.
     The ravens screeched a warning from inside the smoke shaft but Warren peered down anyway. As usual, the chimney was clogged with newspapers, fabric scraps, twigs, branches, and other debris. Six black birds stared back, huddled together in a makeshift nest.
     “Go on now!” Warren shouted.
     The ravens didn’t budge.
     “There are plenty of nice trees around here. Shoo!”
     But the ravens did not “shoo.” They seemed to be pretending that Warren was invisible.
     “I guess we’ll have to do this the hard way,” he said with a sigh.
     Warren had performed this chore dozens of times. At least once or twice a month, he climbed up to the roof and cleared the nest from the chimney before it caused the entire hotel to fill with smoke. But this morning the ravens seemed particularly stubborn. Winter was coming, and they needed a cozy place to ride out the cold weather.
     “What if I poured water on you?” Warren asked. “How would you like that?”
     The birds knew he was bluffing. One snapped its beak, but the rest went right on dozing. So Warren creeped over to the ridge of the roof where a crooked weathervane stood. He unscrewed the sharp metal post and poked it inside the chimney. “I’ll use force if I have to,” he said with determination. “Get out of there or else!”
     The ravens didn’t even ruffle a feather. They knew Warren was too nice to hit a bird with a weathervane.
     It was clear Warren had only one option left. “If you don’t leave now,” he said with as much menace as he could muster, “I’ll go get Aunt Annaconda and then you’ll have to deal with her.”
     The ravens exploded from the chimney, squawking and scattering feathers as they rose into the sky. They had been around the hotel long enough to know all about Annaconda, and no one–not even a raven–dared to test her patience.
     Warren watched until the birds were nothing but dark specks against the dawn’s pale sky. He hated to frighten them, but they’d left him no choice. His gaze lowered and he looked out from his spot high above the ground. The view was nothing special.
     The Warren Hotel was the only building for miles; perched miserably on a hill in a bleak gray countryside, it was ringed by a forest of equally bleak and withered trees. You could walk for hours in every direction without finding anything interesting.
     But Warren wasn’t looking at the depressing view. He was looking beyond it, past the horizon, to where the rest of the world existed. He imagined cities and jungles, seaports and deserts, landscapes he knew only from books. All places he would love to visit . . . were it not for the fact that he was twelve years old and heir to his family’s hotel, where he worked as the sole bellhop, handyman, exterminator, room-service valet, and all-around errand boy. Warren the 13th had spent his whole life at the hotel, just as his father and eleven other Warrens had before him.
     With a sigh, he returned to the grim task of chimney cleaning. Soon his hands were black with soot. He yanked out dozens of sticks and branches and a handful of stranger, more unexpected objects: a lady’s lace bonnet, a rusty nail file, a pie pan, even a bag of marbles he recognized as his own. Warren was trying to figure out how the ravens could have retrieved a bag of marbles from the desk drawer in his attic room when a low growling noise caught his attention.
     Warren squinted into the early-morning fog. To his astonishment, he saw movement in the forest. Concealed by a canopy of spindly branches, a large dark shape was weaving through the trees. The woods around the hotel teemed with bears and wild boars, but this shape was larger than any animal. It growled again, and Warren’s heart gave a leap. This was no ordinary creature.
     It was an automobile!
     He hadn’t seen an automobile since the last guest exited the Warren Hotel, vowing never to return. Five long years had passed without a single customer. Warren’s eyes grew large as the automobile crested the hill. At last, someone was coming to stay with them!
     The car passed through the once-grand iron gates and slowed to a stop at the front doors of the Warren Hotel. And that’s precisely when Warren remembered it was his job to greet new arrivals and help withtheir bags.
     He winced as the hotel intercom sputtered to life–its tinny sound echoing inside the chimney shaft–with his uncle Rupert’s panicked voice ringing through the static:
     “WAAAAARREN!”
     He had to get to the lobby right away! Warren considered using the chimney as a shortcut, but eight stories was a long way down. Instead, he leapt off the side of the roof, grabbed a rain gutter with one hand, and swung through a window in the attic. He landed with a thump, sprinkling soot all over the small bed and desk that crowded his tiny room.
     Warren used to sleep in one of the large bedrooms on the hotel’s second floor, but Aunt Annaconda didn't like having children around and wanted him out of her way. She banished him to the hotel’s topmost floor, eight floors away from the lobby where Warren did most of his work.
     Dashing to a spot on the floor of his room, Warren raised a trap door, climbed down a wooden ladder, and landed with a thump inside the eighth-floor hallway. He picked himself up and ran to the main stairwell, his mind abuzz with possibilities. Who was this mystery guest? And why had this person come to his hotel?
     Things had been much different when Warren was little. Back then, the hotel was booked months in advance. Grand automobiles paraded along the driveway all night long; guests arrived in style–men wearing tuxedos and top hats, ladies bedecked in gowns and jewels and pearls. A dozen bellhops in crisp matching uniforms greeted each new arrival, transferring luggage to polished brass carts while butlers swept by with trays of lemonade and cookies. In those days, the hotel had an enormous staff devoted to keeping everything in tip-top shape. Hedges were clipped, carpets were vacuumed, furniture was dusted, and wallpaper was scrubbed. A troop of maids stretched fresh linens across soft mattresses, and tall vases of fresh flowers brightened every corner.
     But that was long ago,...

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Verlag
Quirk Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2015
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1594748039
ISBN 13 
9781594748035
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Zeichner
Staehle Will
Anzahl der Seiten
216
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande