Hello my bookish friends and first off before I get on with the my blog tour piece…
HAPPY WORLD BOOK DAY!!!!!!!
It’s my favourite day of the year being a school librarian. I’m dressing up today as Wonder Woman which is perfect for International Women’s Day on Sunday. As a blogger though its World Book Day every day for us. So have fun, share stories, read books – especially the sequel to Orphan Monster Spy, which is Devil Darling Spy which is out today! Did you like how I did that!!? Ha. Happy Release Day to it and to celebrate its release as part of the blog tour I have an extract for you all, who are itching like me to read it. (Which I will this month.) But before that here is a little bit more about the book!
Devil Darling Spy (Orphan Monster Spy, #2) by Matt Killeen Published by Usborne Publishing on March 5, 2020
Genres: Historical
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The deadliest weapon is a girl with nothing to lose... Sarah is used to spying in the champagne-fuelled parties of Nazi Berlin. But her new mission is infinitely more deadly - tracking a lethal disease across bullet-torn Africa, to uncover the monster who would use it to create fifty million corpses. Her enemies think she is a terrified little girl. But she is a warrior set to burn them all.
EXTRACT
Chapter 1
23rd August 1940
The siren seemed muffled. It was absorbed by the seemingly endless hills of mud, or it fled into the big grey sky and was gone. Either way it didn’t seem particularly auspicious. It couldn’t even startle the few disinterested seagulls that continued to squat on the grey metal tube, as if it really was just a drainpipe left lying on the side of a hill. They failed to notice the cables and wires that straggled into the mire along its length, or the branches and offshoots of pipework welded into the main cylinder at regular intervals.
However, the grey tube and muddy slope did have a more interested audience elsewhere. The cables trailed away to form an intricate path of black rubber lines, down into the valley and back up the facing slope. At their end, five hundred metres away, was a concrete blockhouse sunk into the hilltop. Through a small slit running horizontally across its length, a dozen eyes watched and waited. The darkness inside managed to be both stuffy and damp.
The boards covering the floor were ill-fitting and filthy, marked with muddy footprints, the walls bare and unadorned. A rusty radio hid in a corner, emitting a quiet metallic hiss.
“Zehn,” a voice crackled through the speaker.
The men straightened up and crowded towards the light. Their uniforms varied in colour and design but shared a predominance of gold and silver braid, medals and epaulettes, and a thick sense of entitlement.
“Neun… Acht… Sieben…”
Even the least theatrical jackets had a great number of hoops, lines and decorations. One man stood apart, in a dark suit, expensive coat and hat.
“Sechs… Fünf…”
The man stared over someone’s garishly braided shoulderboard at the opposite hill, his bright blue eyes piercing and unreadable.
“Vier… Drei… Zwei…”
There was a shuffle of anticipation.
“Eins… Null!”
A swiftly rising whine built into separate hissing screams. Then sparks escaped from each of the pipe’s tributaries in an almost simultaneous cascade, creating one roaring sound from a chorus of individual howls. Fire exploded from the pipe’s summit with an unmistakable thunk, moments before the opening belched a cloud of thick black smoke. The squarking of the scattering seagulls filled the sudden silence. There were a few tuts and disappointed noises from the assembled officers. Certainly the event seemed deeply anticlimactic.
“Did it work?” complained a portly Luftwaffe officer.
