The Tell-Tale Start
Read The Tell-Tale Start Online
Authors: Gordon McAlpine
THE TELL-TALE START
THE TELL-TALE START
Gordon McAlpine
illustrations by Sam Zuppardi
VIKING
An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
VIKING
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,
New Delhi – 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand
(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank,
Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in the United States of America by Viking,
a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2013
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Text copyright © Gordon McAlpine, 2013
Illustrations copyright © Sam Zuppardi, 2013
All rights reserved
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE
ISBN: 978-1-101-62133-2
Printed in the USA
Set in Stempel Schneidler
Book design by Eileen Savage
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
| ALWAYS LEARNING | PEARSON |
To my Dad—G. M.
To Jade—S. Z.
A black cat crossing your path signifies
that the animal is going somewhere.
—Groucho Marx
CHAPTER ONE:
No Ordinary School Day
CHAPTER FOUR:
Lessons in Horror
CHAPTER FIVE:
On the Road with the Poes
CHAPTER SIX:
Tales of Mystery and Imagination
EDGAR
and Allan Poe sat beside each other in the back row of their homeroom class, asleep. They’d been up late the night before, reading the latest in their favorite series, True Stories of Horror, and now they leaned shoulder-to-shoulder, head-to-head, together in dreamland. Like little sleeping angels….
Well, maybe not angels.
The Poe twins bore an uncanny resemblance to their famous great-great-great-great granduncle Edgar Allan Poe, the author of gothic tales so horrifying that for close to two centuries they have kept readers awake long into the night. Edgar and Allan were proud of their great-great-great-great granduncle and happy to look like him. Nonetheless, the resemblance ensured they would never be mistaken for run-of-the-mill boys.
The author Edgar Allan Poe as he looked in the 1840s
The Poe twins today
Edgar
Allan
It wasn’t just external similarities that the boys shared with their great-great-great-great granduncle—they also shared his taste for the thrilling and unexpected.