Lost Boy

New house, new school, new friends–but Matt Lanchester knows it won’t all be that easy when he moves to the town of Hay-on-Wye. Almost as soon as he arrives, he is drawn into a mystery when he sees a roadside memorial marked by a little wooden cross with the initials M.L. carved into it. His initials! Then he meets Robbo and Tig and Old Wil Jones and his wife, Gwynnie. There’s history here and a well-kept village secret–and Matt is desperate to find out more.

Publishers Weekly

Matt Lanchester, newly transplanted to a small Welsh town, is out biking when he imagines a near-collision with a car, only to land next to a roadside memorial to a boy with his own initials. Matt begins to experience the dead boy's ghostly presence as he confronts several puzzles involving the missing son of a local farmer, a turn-of-the-century legend of a lost boy named Tommy Jones and the circumstances surrounding the vehicular death of Martin Lloyd. Newbery (Set in Stone) seamlessly interleaves Tommy Jones's tale among the larger narrative's own levels of suspense-chiefly, whether Matt will succumb to the bullying of the town punks, who claim to want revenge for Martin's death, before he figures out the connections among the three lost boys. With its imaginative melding of present-day concerns, good storytelling, lush descriptions of the landscape and even a faithful dog, this novel will ensnare readers. Ages 8-12. (Mar.)

Linda Newbery, winner of the prestigious Costa Award for Children’s Literature, effortlessly mixes the old with the new, the past with the present, tragedy with triumph in this hauntingly beautiful novel.
Linda Newbery is the acclaimed author of At the Firefly Gate, Sisterland, The Shell House, and Set in Stone, winner of the Costa Award for children’s literature. She lives in Northamptonshire with her husband and three cats.