Fly By Night [Hardcover]

"A wonderful and wondrous novel. Frances Hardinge has joined the company of writers whose books I will always seek out and read."-Garth Nix"A rollicking read to be savored." -- Bookseller (London)

Stunningly original, fabulously inventive and packed with humour and wit, FLY BY NIGHT is simply unique. A fantastic adventure story set in a re-imagined early eighteenth-century England, it marks the extraordinary debut of a brand-new writing talent.

In a fractured realm, struggling to maintain an uneasy peace after years of civil war and religious tyranny, a twelve-year-old orphan and her loyal companion, a large and homicidal goose, are about to become the unlikely heroes of a revolution. Mosca Mye has spent her life in a miserable hamlet, where her father was banished for writing inflammatory books about tolerance and freedom. Now he is dead, and Mosca is on the run, in search of a better life. With Eponymous Clent, a smooth-tongued swindler, she heads for the city of Mandelion, living by her wits among highwaymen and smugglers, dangerously insane rulers, secret agents and radical plotters. But the city is in uproar, for someone is once again printing seditious material and no one is quite what they seem. With suspicion and peril at every turn, Mosca uncovers a shocking plot to force a rule of terror on the people of the Realm, and all too soon merry mayhem leads to murder . . . Funny, surprising and fantastical, with an unforgettable cast of characters, FLY BY NIGHT contains at its heart an inspiring truth - that the power of books can change the world.

Frances Hardinge spent her childhood in a huge old house that inspired her to write strange stories from an early age. She read English at Oxford University, and after she got a job at a software company was bullied by a persistent friend until she reluctantly let a publisher read the first chapters of FLY BY NIGHT. Macmillan made her an immediate offer. A few days after the final draft was delivered, Frances set off on a year-long odyssey around the world. She expects to be in the jungles of South East Asia when FLY BY NIGHT is published.