The Messengers

If you could see the future, would you have the guts to change it? A new psychological thriller from the author of Daylight Saving.Fifteen-year-old Frances is sent to her aunt’s house for the summer to escape difficulties at home. Soon she meets Peter, a man unlike anyone she has ever known. Peter is a messenger—but his messages never bring good news. Peter believes that Frances is a messenger, too. In a compelling page-turner as complex as it is chilling, the author of Daylight Saving poses the provocative question: If you could change the future, where would you start?

From School Library Journal

Gr 9 Up—After her older brother almost kills someone in a bar fight and disappears, Frances, a promising young artist, starts seeing strange things in her drawings. They materialize out of nowhere after she blacks out. She can't figure out why these images are hazy and imprecise—until she puts one of them under a scanner, and learns with the help of her mentor Peter, another "messenger," that each one reveals where and when someone is going to die. Peter's convinced that they're just a couple of killers, but Frances might have a plan to change all that, using their premonitions to save lives rather than end them, and maybe find her brother, presumed dead, in the process. But do they have the power, or the right, to change fate? That's only one of the weighty questions explored in this clever page-turner. VERDICT A mash-up of philosophy, mystery, and horror, this haunting YA novel takes on all of these subjects with satisfying results.—Georgia Christgau, Middle College High School, Long Island City, NY

School Library Journal (starred review) The story poses the kind of ethical questions so popular in basic philosophy courses: if you had the opportunity to save a complete stranger at great risk to you or your family, would you do it? Since such quandaries are the stuff of teen existential exploration, this will please those of a philosophical as well as a supernatural turn of mind.

A mash-up of philosophy, mystery, and horror, this haunting YA novel takes on all of these subjects with satisfying results

About the Author

Edward Hogan is the author of Daylight Saving and two adult novels: Blackmoor, which won the Desmond Elliott prize in the U.K. and was short-listed for both the London Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize, and The Hunger Trace. He lives in Brighton, England.

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