How does your normal, average teenager who has visited the Renaissance and met Leonardo da Vinci in person, go back to the humdrum of high school?
Charley Morton is still trying to figure that out, as she puts her recent unexpected time travel adventure and a narrow escape with her life behind her to focus on this year’s science fair. She knows that working alongside her science fair partner and sometimes boyfriend Billy, a first prize is in her future. She might even allow her sometimes-bestie Beth to join the project. However, in Charley’s world, nothing is simple, and things are about to turn upside down, again, in a new adventure, Find Me in the Time Before (Book 4/Edge of Yesterday; Woodhall Press; October 2022; Price $18.95) by Robin Stevens Payes.
In Find Me in the Time Before, Charley and Billy’s old friend Kairos appears with an urgent problem – his sister Carolina is missing. In Paris. In the 18th century. To find her, Charley will have to search the streets—and cemeteries—of Paris. This is a dangerous place for a 21st-century girl to get lost in, alone and armed only with her smartphone. But Charley has another motive for daring the leap: she’s desperate to track down one of her science heroes, the Marquise Émilie du Châtelet. Among other Earth-shaking achievements, the Marquise formulated the scientific precursor to what would become, two centuries later, Einstein’s famous E=mc2. Charley’s dying to find out how this “daring woman of the Enlightenment ” dueled, gambled and advanced science and mathematics in a world where education was reserved for noblemen and kings. Like many hidden figures through the ages, Émilie’s contributions were neglected, overlooked or lost to the history recorded by men.
With time travel on her mind, Charley will need to enlist Beth’s fashion talents and Billy’s engineering upgrades to smooth out what she knows to be a head-spinning ride through spacetime. Add Charley’s IT, physics, forensic and social innovations to the mix, and she’s on track to win the national Science Fair and collect a cash prize to boot. Just another average school year!
Author Robin Stevens Payes, after years of working as a science and education writer and coach, has a penchant for telling stories that focus on blending history, science, and fiction. Her Edge of Yesterday series is intended to entertain young adult readers and spark an interest in STEM/STEAM careers, especially for girls. Charley and Billy indulge their STEM curiosity and creativity to chase down their dreams. In the same spirit, Robin intends for her books to encourage readers to both dream and create. For teens, Find Me in the Time Before has it all—from romance to fashion, adventure to revolution, and gadgets to ghosts. In an era where kids are emerging into a world changed by a pandemic, the prospect of time travel in the Edge of Yesterday series is a leap into greater imagination and possibility.
About the Author
Robin Stevens Payes is the author of four novels for middle grade to Y/A readers. She offers workshops on storytelling and is in the process of launching a company that focuses on relationship solutions for mothers and their teen daughters. She was founding editor-in-chief of LearnNow, an online publication on the science of learning, and has written for The American Leader, Discovery Education, the National Girls Collaborative Project, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. She lives around the DC beltway in Maryland.
FIND ME IN THE TIME BEFORE
Book 4 in the Edge of Yesterday Series
By Robin Payes
Publisher: Woodhall Press
Publication Date: October 4, 2022
ISBN:
Original Trade Paperback
Price: $18.95
Page count: 436 pages