THE VANISHING ISLAND

Pirates of the Caribbean meets The Emerald Atlas – with a Dash of Charles Dickens – in this epic adventure fantasy set in an alternate history gorgeously realized by Barry Wolverton, author of Neversink.

In the age of discovery, in the kingdom of Britannia, there was once a seaside port town called Map. International trade had transformed the word, with every European nation fighting for control of trade routes to the east, and there was a fortune to be made for the people lucky, ambitious, and ruthless enough to lay claim to them. Map was the home of the repository for all maps of the known world, a fortress lorded over by Rand McNally, a shrewd, cruel, and charismatic monster of a man. And in this town lived a boy named Bren.

Bren is the son of one of Rand McNally’s cartographers, but he is not interested in sitting in a dark room transcribing maps all day – he wants to get out on the ocean and discover things for himself. And when his continued attempts to stow away on port vessels lands him a stint cleaning up the town vomitorium, he gets his chance. Bren receives from a dying sailor a strange coin, one with a hidden message written in Chinese lettering. Bren does not know what it means, but he knows it is valuable – particularly when other people who have come in contact with the coin start dying. Before long, Bren is on the high seas, apprentice navigator on the ship of a mysterious Dutch admiral, pursuing a famed treasure lost since the days of Marco Polo. It is only then that he realizes he may have found more adventure than he bargained for.

Barry Wolverton is the author of Neversink. He has more than fifteen years’ experience creating books, documentary television scripts, and website content for international networks and publishers, including National Geographic, Scholastic.com, the Library of Congress, and the Discovery Networks. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee.