The Hour Thief of Chimewick

Wren Pocket has a secret, and it's a deeply embarrassing one. She can hear what machines are thinking.

The trouble is, machines don't think about anything interesting. The toaster frets about toast. The fridge gossips about the milk. The school bell — the meanest machine in all of Chimewick — lives only to ruin everybody's morning. For eleven years Wren has learned to keep her face very still and say nothing out loud, ever since she told a classmate her family's washing machine was frightened of her dad. In a town that has made clocks for two hundred years, being the girl who talks to the cutlery is not a good way to live.

Then the clocks of Chimewick begin to stop. One by one they fall cold and silent, leaving frozen, ticking-shaped holes in the world — and a courtly stranger called the Clock Doctor arrives to bottle the town's stolen time for himself. Wren is the only one who can hear the machines screaming their warning. And the only one who believes her is Maximilian: a magnificent, hundred-year-old automaton who hasn't budged a bolt in a century and has extremely strong opinions about pigeons, manners, and being called Tin Man.

With her fearless, wagon-hauling, gadget-building friend Dot, a grumbling army of household appliances, one impossibly vain mechanical man, and a joke-cracking grandpa she would do anything to protect, Wren has until the thirteenth hour to outwit a thief who is stealing far more than minutes — before everyone she loves is frozen solid inside a single endless second.

Funny, tender, and full of clever clockwork magic, this is a big-hearted adventure about being the only one who hears the truth — and finding the friends brave enough to listen. Perfect for young readers who love ticking mysteries, unlikely friendships, and heroes who are quietly, splendidly odd.

Start the clock. Grab your copy today.