The Keeping Place - Isobelle Carmody - New
Book 4 of the Obernewtyn Chronicles
Paperback
After a kidnapping, Elspeth Gordie and the Misfits are forced to join the rebellion against the oppressive Council, using their extraordinary mind powers. But Elspeth must also seek out clues left by the long-dead seer, Kasanda, vital to her quest to destroy the Beforetime weaponmachines. One clue is lost in the past, forcing Elspeth to travel the Dreamtrails, stalked by a terrifying winged beast, with the cat, Maruman, as her guide and guardian. Only there can she learn more of the Beforetimer Misfits and their enemy, Govamen. Gradually Elspeth realises that her quest is intimately linked to the Misfits' refuge Obernewtyn – its past and its future.
An extract from the book :
It was a chill moonless night, the only light a raw glow from a fire in the stone-lined pit that reflected dully on the cobbles around its edge, and barely reached the walls surrounding the courtyard. Everything that lay outside the reach of the fire's broodish lume was lost in that blackest shadow which always seems to attend any night light. Sometimes I think the dark is drawn to the light as a moth to flame. Maybe it is the nature of all things to be pulled towards their opposites.
I dragged my eyes from the hypnotic lurching of the flames, determined to read on while I was yet undisturbed. Holding the pages instinctively to the light, though the marks on them would have been all but invisible even in daylight, I ran the tips of my fingers over the rough lines of holes in the paper. I had learned the code of prickings much as I once learned my letters, and the words they shaped were ones I knew, yet skimming over what I had read before, it seemed to me that other meanings hovered above them.
Perhaps this was only because he who made them did not see the world with his eyes, but with his other senses – touch, smell, hearing. I could smell and hear and taste too, of course, but not as well as Dameon. Lacking sight, his other senses had gained strength to compensate.
About the Author Isobelle Carmody
Isobelle Carmody began the first of her highly acclaimed Obernewtyn Chronicles while she was still at high school, and worked on it while completing a Bachelor of Arts, and then a journalism cadetship. The series, and her short stories, have established her at the forefront of fantasy writing in Australia.
Carmody currently divides her time between her home on the Great Ocean Road in Australia, and her travels abroad with her partner and daughter, spending a year each in her two residences. The Stone Key, book five of the Obernewtyn Chronicles was released in February 2008. The Sending, book six of Carmody's Obernewtyn Chronicles, is due for publishing in September 2009, as quoted by a Penguin spokesperson.
Carmody was Guest of Honor at the 2007 Australian National Science Fiction Convention, Convergence 2, held in Melbourne in June 2007.
She has written many award-winning short stories and books for young people. The Gathering was a joint winner of the 1993 CBC Book of the Year Award and the 1994 Children's Literature Peace Prize, and Billy Thunder and the Night Gate was shortlisted for the Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children's Literature in the 2001 NSW Premier's Literary Awards. This was followed by the second book in the series, The Winter Door. The Legend of Little Fur is Isobelle's first series for younger readers.
The Keeping Place - Isobelle Carmody - New - Book 4 of the Obernewtyn Chronicles
In stock-ready to post on Monday | 
