The Tide Engine of Lesser Hollin

About this book

Seventy-one years after the Long Dark switched off the world's power, the island town of Lesser Hollin still lives by one brass machine: the Tide Engine, which tells the town when the sea will let them walk the three-mile Strand to the mainland. Eleven-year-old Hetty Brannock, a cockle-picker's daughter who can't do long division but notices everything, has just been handed its iron crank key by the dying Keeper, to the town's dismay. Now Hetty's first tide table is coming out wrong. Someone has been inside the Engine. With Crossing Day days away, when every family in Lesser Hollin will step onto the sands at the time printed on her paper, Hetty must find out who tampered with the machine and why, before the sea comes back early. Told backwards from the morning everything comes to a head, it's a puzzle that only makes sense once you reach its start.