The Complete Ruby Redfort Collection. Lauren Child

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Название The Complete Ruby Redfort Collection
Автор произведения Lauren Child
Жанр Учебная литература
Серия Ruby Redfort
Издательство Учебная литература
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780008249113



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the gold bar you didn’t put on the scales is the counterfeit. Otherwise put the three bars that are lightest on the scales. Take two of these bars and put them on either side of the scales. If they balance, then the bar you didn’t put on the scales is the counterfeit. Otherwise, the lighter of the two bars is the counterfeit.

      (3) Solution: 42

       Acknowledgments

       Special thanks to my publisher and editor, Ann-Janine Murtagh, for all her help and support during the many years of thinking about writing and actually writing this book. Few editors can be tougher than her and I am grateful for it. I am also very grateful to Adrian Darbishire and Rachel Folder for reading and rereading the text and talking through countless plot options and coming up with some really good ideas along the way. Thanks to Pete Lambert, Lucy Mackay and John Perella for discussing Ruby Redfort ad nauseam. Thank you to David Mackintosh for his beautiful and clever design work and to Nick Lake for his thorough and thoughtful editing. Last of all, thanks a whole heap to Trisha Krauss and Lucy Vanderbilt for advice on American-speak.

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      Contents

       Title Page

       Dedication

      Coming up for air

      An Ordinary Kid

      Chapter 1. Don’t back away or they will see you as prey

       Chapter 14. Another Twinford Bay casualty

       Chapter 34. Laugh all you like, sucker

       Chapter 35. Connecting the dots

       Chapter 36. Stranger things have happened at sea

       Chapter 37. A cloud of indigo

       Chapter 38. Just static

       Chapter 39. Your mother’s jewel

       Chapter 40. Looking for trouble

       Chapter 41. Swimming blind

       Chapter 42. Whatever happened to plan B?

       Chapter 43. A stitch in time

       Chapter 44. Playing for time

       Chapter 45. You can count on me

       Chapter 46. M is for Martha

       Chapter 47. Where’s an apple barrel when you need one?

       Not a dream

       Chapter 48. The truth is indigo

       Chapter 49. The truth will out

       Chapter 50. Hard to explain

       A real emergency

       A note on the Chime Melody musical code, with help from Dr Thomas Gardner, Music Consultant to Ruby Redfort.

       A note on Count von Viscount’s static code by Marcus du Sautoy, Super-Geek Consultant to Ruby Redfort.

       A note on Arvo Pärt

       Acknowledgments

       Coming up for air

      THE SUN FLICKERED ON THE OCEAN, cutting bright diamonds of light into the surface of the indigo water. A three-year-old girl was peering over the side of a sailboat, staring down into the deep. The only sounds came from her parents’ laughter, the sing-song hum of a man’s voice and the clapping of the waves against the yacht.

      Gradually the sounds became less and less distinct until the girl was quite alone with the ocean. It seemed to be pulling her, drawing her to it… confiding a secret, almost whispering to her.

      She barely felt herself fall as she tipped forward and slipped into the soft ink of the sea.

      Down she twisted, her arms, her legs above her like tendrils. The water felt smooth and perfectly cold; fish darted and silver things whisked by – her breath bubbled up as transparent pearls.

      Then suddenly, like a snap of the fingers,