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Book Summary and Reviews of As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust by Alan Bradley

As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust by Alan Bradley

As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

A Flavia de Luce Novel

by Alan Bradley

  • Published:
  • Jan 2015, 416 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Flavia de Luce—"part Harriet the Spy, part Violet Baudelaire from Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" (The New York Times Book Review)—takes her remarkable sleuthing prowess to the unexpectedly unsavory world of Canadian boarding schools in the captivating new mystery from New York Times bestselling author Alan Bradley.

Banished! is how twelve-year-old Flavia de Luce laments her predicament, when her father and Aunt Felicity ship her off to Miss Bodycote's Female Academy, the boarding school that her mother, Harriet, once attended across the sea in Canada. The sun has not yet risen on Flavia's first day in captivity when a gift lands at her feet. Flavia being Flavia, a budding chemist and sleuth, that gift is a charred and mummified body, which tumbles out of a bedroom chimney. Now, while attending classes, making friends (and enemies), and assessing the school's stern headmistress and faculty (one of whom is an acquitted murderess), Flavia is on the hunt for the victim's identity and time of death, as well as suspects, motives, and means. Rumors swirl that Miss Bodycote's is haunted, and that several girls have disappeared without a trace. When it comes to solving multiple mysteries, Flavia is up to the task—but her true destiny has yet to be revealed.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Exceptional ... [The] intriguing setup only gets better, and Bradley makes Miss Bodycote's a suitably Gothic setting for Flavia's sleuthing. Through it all, her morbid narrative voice continues to charm." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Another treat for readers of all ages ... [As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust] maintains the high standards [Alan] Bradley set from the start." —Booklist

"Plot twists come faster than Canadian snowfall... . Bradley's sense of observation is as keen as gung-ho scientist Flavia's... . The results so far are seven sparkling Flavia de Luce mysteries." —Library Journal

This information about As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust 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.

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Author Information

Alan Bradley

Alan Bradley is the internationally bestselling author of many short stories, children's stories, newspaper columns, and the memoir The Shoebox Bible. His first Flavia de Luce novel, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, received the Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger Award, the Dilys Winn Award, the Arthur Ellis Award, the Agatha Award, the Macavity Award, and the Barry Award, and was nominated for the Anthony Award. His other Flavia de Luce novels are The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag, A Red Herring Without Mustard, I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, Speaking from Among the Bones, The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches, and As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust.

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