The Hundred-Year Matinee

Some ghosts want to be remembered. This one just wants an audience.

Eleven-year-old Wren Okafor keeps lists. Reasons Things Are Fine. Reasons They Are Not. It's the one reliable thing about her, and she needs it now more than ever, because Pell Harbor is the eleventh town she's lived in in eleven years — one home per birthday, which is not a streak anyone brags about. This time home is the crumbling apartment above her grandmother's dying movie palace, the Halcyon, where the marquee spells HALC ON and the roof drips into a bucket and the whole place smells like butter and a hundred years of secrets.

Wren is the only one who notices the second part. She's also the only one who can see Albie.

Albie is the relentlessly cheerful ghost of a boy who's been stuck in the theater for a century and can't remember why. He narrates his own life like a silent film, hums his own dramatic music, and claims the very best seat in the house. He's funny and see-through and lonelier than he lets on — and Wren, who has spent her whole life being unseen, is the first person in a hundred years to truly look at him.

Then a smooth-talking developer arrives, determined to buy the Halcyon and knock it flat. As the wrecking ball looms, Wren and Albie realize their two mysteries are secretly one. A clock stopped at 9:13. A hidden strongbox. A great bronze bell in the tower. A storm rolling in exactly like the one that ended everything a century ago. The secret of Albie's last day is the only thing that can save the theater — but Albie is fading, frame by frame, and they're running out of time to find it before he's gone for good.

Funny, gently spooky, and enormous of heart, this is a story about courage in small bodies, found family, and the surest way to never be forgotten: to truly see someone else.

Take your seat. The matinee is about to begin.