The Midnight Lighthouse Cat

Some lighthouses keep ships safe. This one keeps secrets.

When nine-year-old Elsie Pethick arrives in Salt Hollow, the fog comes up the road to meet her — thick, grey, and cold as the inside of a fridge. She doesn't want to be here. Home is three hundred miles behind her, along with her old bedroom, her old friends, and the crab-apple tree she could climb right to the top of. Home is also where Dad used to be, before his ship sailed to the far side of the world and stopped coming back. All she has left of him is a small green sea-glass lantern and a promise: light it, and he'll know she's thinking of him.

But something is wrong in Salt Hollow.

On the foggiest nights, fishing boats slip out to sea and never come home. The great lighthouse lamp is flickering and failing. And all over town, frightened voices whisper about the Grey — the fog that walks, that comes up out of the cold water hunting for lights, and takes whatever it finds.

The only one who seems to understand is Mortimer: an enormous, marmalade-coloured, supremely grumpy cat the size of a small dog, with a torn ear, a face like a furious cushion, and a talent for stealing sausages. Mortimer keeps the light. He always has. And when the fog begins climbing the rocks against the wind, every orange hair on his back stands straight up.

Now the worst fog in ten years is rolling in on Lantern Night, boats are still missing, and someone Elsie has come to care about is lost out there in the Grey. To bring them home, one homesick girl and one bad-tempered cat will have to do the bravest, most foolish thing imaginable — row their little boat straight into the heart of the fog.

A warm, funny, shiver-and-giggle seaside mystery for readers who love brave kids, scene-stealing cats, and lights that always find their way home.

Light the lamp, grab the cat, and set sail today.