Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Secret in Time
    A Secret in Time
    A Secret in Time
    Ebook105 pages1 hour

    A Secret in Time

    By Sally Nicholls and Rachael Dean

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Alex and Ruby are back in their FOURTH time-slip adventure, tumbling back into 1947! From multi-award-winning author Sally Nicholls comes another brilliant action-packed adventure for 7+ readers, beautifully illustrated by Rachael Dean.

    When siblings Alex and Ruby tumble back through the mirror, they find themselves in the freezing-cold winter of 1947.

    Food is scarce in the aftermath of the Second World War and life at Applecott House is hard.

    As Alex and Ruby discover they must solve the mystery of a missing family heirloom to ever have hopes of returning home, their adventure takes them trekking across the snow and treacherous ice on a perilous treasure hunt.

    Will they make it home and back to the present day or will they be stuck in 1947?

    Full of action and humour and featuring exciting black-and-white illustrations throughout, this is another superb time-slip story which brilliantly brings history to life as part of an adventure.

    'A clever vehicle for introducing the differences between then and now in an accessible way, with a fast-paced plot and a lovely spooky ending' - The Times on A Chase in Time

    Have you read Alex and Ruby's other adventures: A Chase in Time, A Christmas in Time, An Escape in Time?

    Cover illustration by Isabelle Follath.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNosy Crow Ltd
    Release dateOct 7, 2021
    ISBN9780857639134
    A Secret in Time
    Author

    Sally Nicholls

    Acclaimed author Sally Nicholls has written several novels for children, including Ways to Live Forever, Shadow Girl, and Season of Secrets. She has won the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize and the Dimplex New Writer of the Year Award. Her short story in Mystery & Mayhem is ‘Safe Keeping’, a tribute to Boy’s Own-style adventures.

    Read more from Sally Nicholls

    Related to A Secret in Time

    Titles in the series (4)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Children's Science Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      HOME To Roost

      Mar 5, 2024

      HOME To Roost
      11 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Home to ROOST

      Jan 11, 2022

      Home to ROOST
      11 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A child's Christmas in Northern Ireland

      Oct 18, 2023

      During Christmases of the 1950s and 1960s, Northern Irish children knew nothing of present mountains. What we did know about was dancing and skipping for weeks in anticipation of the one present we knew we would get. This surprise sat tantalisingly b

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Yuletide Reading

      Sep 24, 2020

      Many classic novels and short stories contains Christmas scenes-merry or otherwise. Can you indentify the works from which these holiday passages are excerpted? 1 “Merry Christmas, little daughters! I’m glad you began at once, and hope you will keep

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      St. Patrick's Tales and Traditions

      Jan 31, 2023

      St. Patrick's Day was a special time in my life when I was growing up in the 1940s and ‘50s in Iron River in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. That was a day I got to spend time with my Irish grandma, Elizabeth Scott, and celebrate the “wearin’ o’ the gree

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      St. Patrick's Tales and Traditions

      Jan 31, 2023

      St. Patrick's Day was a special time in my life when I was growing up in the 1940s and ‘50s in Iron River in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. That was a day I got to spend time with my Irish grandma, Elizabeth Scott, and celebrate the “wearin’ o’ the gree

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Cricket League

      Apr 1, 2020

      Linden, age 9 Green Bay, WI Ophidia, the medusa, tried desperately to sketch a self-portrait. Later she would add color. Her problem was every time she looked into the lake at her reflection, the snakes of her hair were in a very different place. Sh

      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Where Does This Live?

      Dec 6, 2022

      The Roseville Hotel had closed many years ago, and the rooms upstairs had been converted to apartments, but the bar on the ground floor was still called the Roseville Hotel, because everyone was used to the name. One Saturday in January, John James a

      22 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Changing ROOMS

      Oct 1, 2024

      Changing ROOMS
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Child Within

      Aug 10, 2022

      The Child Within
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Benjamin Nugent

      Jun 15, 2018

      Claire’s roommates threw her out on November third, for falling behind on rent and hogging the Xbox. During the next three weeks, she lived in other people’s houses. She missed the Xbox, but couch surfing was like a game. She had to not smell like co

      20 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Changing ROOMS

      Sep 14, 2022

      Changing ROOMS
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Changing ROOMS

      Oct 1, 2024

      Changing ROOMS
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Hound and the Hidden Homework

      Feb 1, 2019

      The Hound and the Hidden Homework
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Stolen THREADS

      Sep 11, 2024

      Stolen THREADS
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Through The Eyes Of Iris

      Feb 17, 2020

      Through The Eyes Of Iris
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      THE Well-wishers

      Nov 17, 2021

      THE Well-wishers
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Blue ICE

      Dec 12, 2023

      Blue ICE
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Quiet Boy

      Jan 28, 2019

      The Quiet Boy
      29 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Dance with Me

      Sep 17, 2021

      Dance with Me
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Blue ICE

      Dec 8, 2021

      Blue ICE
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Wildest Place OF ALL

      Mar 2, 2022

      The Wildest Place OF ALL
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Most Wonderful GIFT

      Nov 27, 2024

      The Most Wonderful GIFT
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Housewarming

      Dec 1, 2022

      DENNIS MCFARLAND’S most recent novel is Nostalgia. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, and the Scholar, among other places. When Kevin arrived at the top floor and stepped into a long dark hallway, he couldn’t re

      21 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Child’s play

      Dec 21, 2021

      Child’s play
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Necklace

      Mar 8, 2021

      A fine silver chain, with a circlet of diamonds. More of a pendant, really. Lydia saw it in one of the glossy magazines left in the reception of the TV channel where they were waiting to pitch. She would never read one of those normally – never had t

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Waiting on Alice

      Jun 1, 2021

      Waiting on Alice
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Best FRIEND

      Feb 10, 2021

      Best FRIEND
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      GHOST In The HOUSE

      Oct 1, 2021

      GHOST In The HOUSE
      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Secret in Time

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      A Secret in Time - Sally Nicholls

      It’s hideous, said Ruby Pilgrim, staring at herself in the mirror. Absolutely hideous. I look about eight! And you look even worse.

      Alex didn’t reply. Secretly he rather liked his new uniform. White shirt, grey shorts and blazer, red jersey and socks, striped tie. At his current school the uniform was a red sweatshirt and a T-shirt. At the big noisy school most of his friends were going to in September you wore a blue sweatshirt in winter, and a shirt and tie in summer. Alex didn’t consider sweatshirts a proper uniform at all. This one looked smart.

      Seven maybe! said Ruby in disgust. Six!

      Things were, he had to admit, worse for Ruby. She was wearing what Aunt Joanna called a gymslip, but Alex and Ruby would have called a pinafore dress, the sort of thing only very little girls would ever have worn at their primary school. The striped tie and blazer were all right, but the whole thing looked most unRubyish. Ruby was thirteen, and currently went to the secondary school with the blue sweatshirt. There she wore her tie as short as she could get away with, stuck badges all over the lapels of her coat and had pulled all the thread out of the school crest on her chest. There she looked like a teenager. Here she looked like something out of Enid Blyton.

      Everyone else will look the same, Alex said.

      Ruby glared. It’s all right for you! she said. You’d have had to move schools anyway!

      It was true. Alex would be leaving primary school forever in September, and everything would change. The old, comfortable routine of glue sticks and topic books and school trays would be replaced with terrifying prospects like algebra and rugby and getting your head flushed down the toilets. He hadn’t been looking forward to it at all.

      But this new school…

      Their parents had taken them on a tour. Ruby had been scowling and furious, but Alex was secretly thrilled. It had its own theatre. Its own swimming pool. Canoes and rowing boats that pupils took out on the river in PE. A beautiful old-fashioned library, with ladders on wheels. School trips to France to go skiing. ("Not that Mum and Dad could afford to send us on those!" said Ruby.)

      "Only Aunt Joanna could think giving us money for school was a good idea, said Ruby. St Caedmon’s must cost thousands and thousands of pounds. Just think what we could have done with that! We could go on a round-the-world cruise! We could buy our own yacht!"

      You don’t even like boats! said Alex. "And I don’t think she’s paying for all of it. Mum and Dad are helping."

      He knew Aunt Joanna was trying to be kind. Last summer he and Ruby had stepped inside a magic time-travelling mirror and found themselves in 1912. There they’d helped save a Saxon treasure from some thieves and hidden it in a secret compartment in the sitting-room wall, where it had stayed until they’d triumphantly revealed it to Aunt Joanna. Aunt Joanna had sold the Newberry Cup at Christmas, and now she’d told their parents that she wanted them to have some of the money, as a thank-you. Only instead of just putting it in their bank accounts and letting them spend it on what they wanted, the money was to go towards this new, expensive school.

      Come on, he said. Let’s go and show Aunt Joanna the uniforms and get it over with.

      Ruby pushed herself off the bed and went downstairs. Alex followed.

      The big eighteenth-century mirror that had started all this hung in the hallway below the staircase. Alex glanced at it reflexively as he passed. Most of the time it just showed Aunt Joanna’s hallway, with the front door and the tiled floor, and the little table with the guest book, and leaflets about local attractions. But sometimes…

      Ruby!

      Sometimes it didn’t.

      Sometimes it showed other reflections, long-ago hallways in long-ago Applecott Houses. And at those times you could step into it and be taken … well, who knew?

      Somewhen else.

      This time it showed a dark hallway, papered with dingy green paper, and what looked like a painting of a knight on a horse. A little girl was sitting on the floor laying out a train set. She looked about five or six, with fair hair and bright-blue eyes. Although she was inside she was wearing a brown coat, a pink woolly hat and scarf, and boots.

      "All right, said Ruby. She looked at the reflection. When do you think it is?"

      Alex shrugged. It was hard to tell. Twentieth century definitely. Later than 1912, when the girls they’d met had worn petticoats and bodices and all sorts. But longer ago than the photographs of his parents’ childhoods.

      Hey, Ruby said. "Do you think we should yell for Aunt Joanna? If she saw this, she’d have to believe us."

      Alex felt a surge of panic. No! he said far too quickly. He was sure the mirror didn’t want Aunt Joanna to know its secrets. "What if it closed? What if it never opened again? What if this is our one chance?"

      All right! said Ruby. It was just an idea. She caught hold of his sleeve. Ready? He nodded.

      Ready.

      And they stepped into the mirror.

      The familiar sucking sensation. The familiar lurch in the pit of Alex’s stomach. And the violence at the other end as they landed in a heap on the floor of the hallway at Applecott House. And – so sudden it felt like a physical attack – the cold.

      It was freezing – literally, Alex realised, as he sat up and saw his breath coming out in icy clouds. Even in his new school jersey and blazer, it was desperately cold; midwinter, snowy-day-without-a-coat-on cold. The tiled hall floor against his hands and knees was almost colder than he could bear. He looked around, wondering if the door and windows were open or something, but, no, they were shut. It was snowing, though; through the

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1
      pFad - Phonifier reborn

      Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

      Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


      Alternative Proxies:

      Alternative Proxy

      pFad Proxy

      pFad v3 Proxy

      pFad v4 Proxy