A GRIM REAPER’S GUIDE TO CHEATING DEATH

Being stuck at work on her birthday seems fitting for Nora Bird, whose special day has felt marked by death since the untimely demise of both her parents on the same day 18 years earlier, when she was 8. It’s all the more fitting because Nora’s work is quite literally the work of death. Like a modern spin on the Grim Reaper, Nora’s role involves the Secure Collection, Yielding, Transport, and Handling of Essences, suitably abbreviated to S.C.Y.T.H.E. Nora’s just trying to make the day go by when she gets her latest case: Charles Bird, set to die in a crash at 11:15 a.m. Charles Bird, as in Nora’s twin brother, Charlie. Though it goes against everything she signed up for in her job, Nora dashes over to Charlie to try to protect him from the inevitable, loading him and his newly acquired African gray parrot, Jessica, into the car to hit the road for anywhere-but-here. The only trouble is that neither is sure where to seek refuge, and things stall as they try a few dead-end options while S.C.Y.T.H.E. keeps tracking them down (but how?). Leaving the country seems the only option. Canada’s Virgo Bay, a place their father had old friends—or maybe family—might provide some sort of protection for Charlie while Nora figures out a plan. The path to Virgo Bay is more than a little confusing, but what the twins find there is worth every moment of trouble, and it may lead them to answers for questions they never knew they had about their parents.