Find Me in the Time Before by Robin Stevens Payes

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

Sleepwalkers: Round One by Izzi Breigh

"Sleepwalkers: Round One" book cover. The cover features an illustration in a graphic style with hard black outlines. Three kids stand in front of the shadow of a mansion surrounded by dead trees. On the left, there is a shorter boy in shorts, a sweater, and a blue baseball cap. In the middle is a tall girl with brown hair in pigtails wearing a yellow t-shirt and jean shorts. On the right is a short boy with shaggy brown hair, a long t-shirt and pink shorts. Their image is reflected beneath them in black and white like a mirror image. They are surrounded by werewolf-like creatures in the reflection.“No one goes to the Old Sleep. Not willingly,” said the attendant.

And there it was: the Old Sleep. Ellie had heard that’s what they call it.

“Some friendly advice for you, free of charge,” said the attendant, leaning closer to Ellie’s father. “My late wife, God rest her soul, used to say, ‘Stay away from people with bad reputations. They got ‘em for a reason.’ I think the same could be said for houses.”

Welcome Izzi Breigh, a new voice in middle-grade horror whose debut novel SLEEPWALKERS: Round One (ISBN: 978-1-7379135-0-4, Somnium Publishing, February 22, 2022) will be published this Winter.  In the first book of a four-part series, it is 1986 and 11-year-old Ellie Dasher moves from her comfortable hometown in Florida to a house named “Old Sleep” in Connecticut.  Oddly, the house was left to Ellie and her younger brother Elijah.  Soon their family will find out why the children are so important to the house.

Old Sleep is every bit a classic haunted house from its creaky stairs and broken grandfather clocks to the deep family secrets that Ellie is compelled to uncover. Just as she starts to learn the history of the Dasher family home, tragedy strikes. Her brother Elijah falls ill after a horrifying ambush that both Ellie and Elijah experience while having a nightmare. How is Ellie going to make her parents believe that it was a dream that put her brother in a coma?

Fortunately, Old Sleep has a ghostly guide, and with his help, Ellie stumbles into the mysterious world of Inzien and the Sleepwalkers.  She doesn’t know who they are or what they do, but she is certain her brother has been taken to their world and is in trouble.  It’s a strange place with creatures and characters right out of the nightmares of children.  In fact, Sleepwalkers can only visit the mysterious world of Inzien while they are asleep. They are also the only ones who can help Ellie get her brother back- and the clock is ticking.

The heart-pounding first installment, SLEEPWALKERS: Round One is a frightening thrill ride that fans of Lemony Snicket and Neil Gaiman will be eager to discover.  With all manner of strange folk, hostile monsters, and odd foods, the land of the sleepwalkers is a place that dreams are made of. But Ellie Dasher is learning that some dreams have sharp teeth and, yes, they do bite.

About the Author

Izzi Breigh, raised by a family of peacocks, grew up on a rutabaga farm. She now resides in a small cottage made entirely of pinecones. Izzi enjoys knitting shirts for starfish, rooms without corners, and peddling time. Her day job is filling hourglasses with precisely the right amount of sand, which she sells for 2 copper pennies every Saturday at her local flea market. Hide and seek is her favorite sport and though she has repeatedly spotted Waldo, she has yet to figure out where in the world is Carmen Sandiego.

SLEEPWALKERS: Round One
By Izzi Breigh
Somnium Publishing
Publication Date: February 2022
ISBN (paperback): 978-1-7379135-0-4
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-7379135-1-1
Original Trade Paperback / eBook
Price: $19.99 /  $9.99 MSRP
Pages: 332

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