Toward a Secret Sky
Author: Heather Maclean
Book Description:
Shortly after 17-year-old Maren Hamilton is orphaned and sent to live with grandparents she’s never met in Scotland, she receives an encrypted journal from her dead mother that makes her and everyone around her a target. It confirms that her parents were employed by a secret, international organization that’s now intent on recruiting her. As Maren works to unravel the clues left behind by her mother, a murderous madness sweeps through the local population, terrorizing her small town. Maren must decide if she’ll continue her parents’ fight or stay behind to save her friends.
With the help of Gavin, an otherworldly mercenary she’s not supposed to fall in love with, and Graham, a charming aristocrat who is entranced with her, Maren races against the clock and around the country from palatial estates with twisted labyrinths to famous cathedrals with booby-trapped subterranean crypts to stay ahead of the enemy and find a cure. Along the way, she discovers the great truth of love: that laying down your life for another isn’t as hard as watching them sacrifice everything for you.
With the help of Gavin, an otherworldly mercenary she’s not supposed to fall in love with, and Graham, a charming aristocrat who is entranced with her, Maren races against the clock and around the country from palatial estates with twisted labyrinths to famous cathedrals with booby-trapped subterranean crypts to stay ahead of the enemy and find a cure. Along the way, she discovers the great truth of love: that laying down your life for another isn’t as hard as watching them sacrifice everything for you.
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EXCERPT
I was okay until they started lowering my mom’s casket into the ground.
Up to that point, the whole funeral had felt like an out-of-body experience. I walked around inside my own thick-walled aquarium. My motions were slow. My thoughts bogged down. I knew I was on display—everyone craning their necks to catch the slightest ripple of my movement. The obituary in the paper that morning hadn’t helped:
Anna Hamilton, systems analyst for T.A., Inc., passed away in a freak accident on Tuesday night. She is preceded in death by her husband, Hugh, and is survived by her only daughter, Maren, age 17.
Freak. It might as well have been my middle name. And everyone knew it wasn’t an “accident.” I could hear the whispers of the people from her company at the funeral. I knew what they were saying; their too-loud whispers slithered through the air like a toxic smoke.
Isn’t she the one who found the body? Poor thing.
What will she do now? She’s a veritable orphan!
I heard they’re shipping her off to his parents in Scotland. It’s a shame she’s never met them. It’s a shame she never met him . . .
But I didn’t care, because I was safe behind the glass. Nothing could get in and touch me, not even grief.
Nothing, that is, until the screaming started.
We were gathered around the jagged hole that meant to swallow the most important thing in my life. My father died before I was born. Well, on the day I was born, and my mother was all I had. We’d been inseparable, and now we were going to be separated forever. I couldn’t think that way, though, or I’d climb into the ground with her.
I was staring ahead, eyes unfocused, lost in the mournful symphony of the squeaking pulleys, when a sudden scream shattered everything. An unearthly, guttural wail unlike anything I’d ever heard before. For one horrifying moment, I believed it was actually coming from the grave; that it was my mom screaming.
Heather Maclean is a New York Times bestselling author and editor of 15 books. She has appeared on Good Morning America, the CBS Early Show, Fox Business Network, ParentsTV and Sirius' "Dr. Radio."
After graduating from Princeton University, she began her career at Entertainment Weekly. Her work has appeared in Conde Nast Traveler, Pregnancy magazine, NY Metro Parents magazine, as well as newspapers around the country.
Named one of the "16 Best Entrepreneurs in America" by Sir Richard Branson, she accompanied the adventurous business legend on a 50,000-mile trip around the world, alternately helping improve the lives of others (designing sustainable development initiatives in South African villages) and fearing for her own (rappelling out of a Black helicopter in a Moroccan sandstorm). She was also the first civilian mom to experience zero gravity aboard a "space plane," an experience she will never, ever repeat. Their journey, titled The Rebel Billionaire, was televised on Fox TV in 2005 for an audience of 8 million viewers.
Heather is also a former Disney executive. She launched several of the company's first, award-winning websites, and holds the distinction of being the first person to ever answer Mickey Mouse's email.
When not castle hunting in her husband's native Scotland, Heather fills her days with her two beautiful daughters, Hunter and Hadley, and dashing son, Gavin.
After graduating from Princeton University, she began her career at Entertainment Weekly. Her work has appeared in Conde Nast Traveler, Pregnancy magazine, NY Metro Parents magazine, as well as newspapers around the country.
Named one of the "16 Best Entrepreneurs in America" by Sir Richard Branson, she accompanied the adventurous business legend on a 50,000-mile trip around the world, alternately helping improve the lives of others (designing sustainable development initiatives in South African villages) and fearing for her own (rappelling out of a Black helicopter in a Moroccan sandstorm). She was also the first civilian mom to experience zero gravity aboard a "space plane," an experience she will never, ever repeat. Their journey, titled The Rebel Billionaire, was televised on Fox TV in 2005 for an audience of 8 million viewers.
Heather is also a former Disney executive. She launched several of the company's first, award-winning websites, and holds the distinction of being the first person to ever answer Mickey Mouse's email.
When not castle hunting in her husband's native Scotland, Heather fills her days with her two beautiful daughters, Hunter and Hadley, and dashing son, Gavin.
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Seems cool! Nice giveaway :)
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