A portal to India, hidden in a mysterious garden in the English countryside. A demonic killer, preying on Indian street children. A lonely English girl, the only one who can stop the killing. After inheriting her great-uncle’s cottage, Lizzie Jones discovers a magical portal to Kashi, the Indian City of Light, concealed in his strange garden. Soon she begins to suspect a mysterious intruder … suspect a mysterious intruder might be the terrifying killer, the Pisaca of Kashi, using the portal to evade capture. Lizzie must act to save the children – but what can she do?
A fast paced mystery adventure for lovers of His Dark Materials and Harry Potter.
‘an entertaining and exciting book. I was hooked as soon as Lizzie travelled to India’ Guardian Children’s Books
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Book Review by Pauline Reid . The City of Light: The Secret Of The Tirthus
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Blurb
A portal to India, hidden in a mysterious garden in the English countryside.
A demonic killer, preying on Indian street children.
A lonely English girl, the only one who can stop the killing.
After inheriting her great-uncle’s cottage, Lizzie Jones discovers a magical portal to Kashi, the Indian City of Light, concealed in his strange garden. Soon she begins to suspect a mysterious intruder might be the terrifying killer, the Pisaca of Kashi, using the portal to evade capture. Lizzie must act to save the children – but what can she do?
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What I Thought Of This Book
Paulines Personal Picks, bought from Amazon.com as an ebook, this is a YA Fantasy Fiction/Middle Grade book series. Well right away I was drawn into this book with food on the table, yes, this time it’s beans on toast! So naturally at lunch time I had to have a feast of baked beans, but mine were with fish in a double decker sandwhich. I was so pleased that a dog was featured in this book, and Mr Tubs, as he is called has come to be a friendly animal that develops onto my pages with licks included (dry licks of course). Thank goodness Mr Tubs doesn’t jump on you, I don’t think I could stand my kindle jumping around.
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Ok, so now let’s get serious now, you know I’ve always wanted to go to India, and this was my first chance, a glimpse of what it must be like to go there, Steve took me to a place I will never get to see in a life time … India, the Ganges, the way the people dressed, the gnats, the burials drifting out in the sacred river, the smells of incense, the smell of raw sewerage, all so real. We are lucky as readers to be transported to two places in this story, Lizzie finds a portal, at first, like any reasonable person would, she can’t believe that this is real, she must be dreaming, but reasonable explanations says she’s not jumping from England, to India. In India – a killer on the lose. Lizzie, puzzled, overwhelmed yet very curious sets out to find out more, but some very strange things are also happening back where she lives in Herefordshire, England, when she finds people she has seen in India now in her home town. Had they used the portal too? As readers we hurriedly read along to see if Lizzie can make sense of the situation. Is she being used in some kind of witch hunt?
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Quote I Enjoyed.
“Elephants can detect things for miles through the ground.”
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This was quite an entertaining read, such imagination was used to create quite an adventure. This is book 1 of a 5 book series. It will be quite intriguing to see where Lizzie will end up next.
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Recommendation
I would like to recommend this book to any YA Fantasy Fiction Fan out there, to anyone who loves the culture of India, to anyone who loves witch hunts, anyone who loves reading middle grade books and anyone who is a fan of reading series.
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