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Who is Mary Darling? In this smartly subversive Victorian mash-up of the legendary literary novels Peter Pan and Sherlock Holmes, the intrepid mother of the Darling children is on the case―and always one step ahead of her inept husband and a famous detective.
Mary Darling is a pretty wife whose boring husband is befuddled by her independent ways. But one fateful night, Mary becomes the distraught mother whose three children have gone missing from their beds. After her well-meaning uncle John Watson contacts the greatest detective of his era (but not that great), Mary is Sherlock Holmes's prime suspect in her children's disappearance.
To save her family, Mary must escape an attempt to have her locked away as mad, and to travel halfway around the world. Along the way, her allies include a Solomon Islander whose village was destroyed by Western civilization; a Malagasy woman on an island that is run by women; Captain Hook and the crew of the Jolly Roger; and of course, Nana, the faithful dog and nursemaid.
This witty and adventurous new novel from Pat Murphy (The City Not Long After) will delight fans of classic Victorian tales, as well as those who are looking for a radical new take on the British Empire.
"The wit, wisdom, and whimsy on offer here are sure to win fans." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Mary's story is a dangerous and delightful adventure that turns the bigotry and misogyny of Victorian England on its head." ―Library Journal (starred review)
"Put the beloved characters of Peter Pan and Sherlock Holmes into the blender of Pat Murphy's prodigious imagination and you have a book that upends, complicates, situates, and explicates the stories we have always known. Full of surprises and deeply satisfying." ―Karen Joy Fowler, author of Booth
"A rip-roaring tale of magic and mystery." ―Andrea Hairston, author of Archangels of Funk
This information about The Adventures of Mary Darling was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Pat Murphy is an acclaimed author of science fiction, fantasy, and science books for adults, teens, and children. She has received the Nebula Award for The Falling Woman, the Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon Memorial, and Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine Readers Awards for Rachel in Love, the World Fantasy Award for Bones, and the Christopher Award for The Wild Girls. Murphy has worked as a writer at a variety of idiosyncratic institutions, including the Exploratorium science museum and Klutz Press (the Complete Klutz series). She was the Activity Guru for the ed-tech startup Mystery Science and the Marketing Director for the Crucible, a school of fire arts. Murphy currently works full time as a science fiction and fantasy author in Boulder City, Nevada, in the Mojave Desert, where she is frequently visited by rabbits, quail, and the occasional coyote.
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