The Memory Thief

Description

A magical, award-winning novel about a girl who wants to escape her memories and a troll who is desperately trying to remember his, from the acclaimed author of Conrad Cooper's Last Stand and The Impossible Boy A lonely troll and a fierce, spiky girl form an unlikely alliance in Leonie Agnew's extraordinary novel for children aged 9 years and up. Wright Family Foundation Esther Glen Award for Junior Fiction 2022 Seth has been trapped behind the iron bars of the public gardens for as long as he can remember. By day he's frozen as a statue of a shepherd boy, but as soon as the sun sets he roams the park, ravenously hungry. He is a troll, and the food he seeks is human memories. Then he meets Stella. There's something so different about her - Seth doesn't want her memories. He simply wants to talk to her. But there's someone else in the garden who sees Stella as a threat...and a meal. Captivating, spine-tingling and surprising, this is a novel that holds you spellbound. What is Stella trying to forget? What are the memories that Seth is piecing together? And will he ever escape the lonely garden and start truly living?

Leonie Agnew (Author) Leonie Agnew is a New Zealand writer to watch - with each novel she explores intriguing new territory, and surprises her readers' expectations. Formerly a copywriter for ad agencies and currently a primary school teacher, Leonie's first novel, Super Finn (Scholastic, 2011) won the Storylines Tom Fitzgibbon award and went on to be the 2012 Junior Fiction award and Best First Book Award at the NZPBACYA. In 2013 she was the University of Otago College of Education/Creative New Zealand Children's Writer in Residence. Her second novel, Conrad Cooper's Last Stand, was published by Puffin in 2014 and won a Storylines Notable Book Award and the LIANZA Esther Glen Medal for Junior Fiction. The Impossible Boy followed in 2016, receiving a 2017 Storylines Notable Junior Fiction Award and the UK David Fickling Master of the Inkpot Award for an unpublished manuscript. Leonie lives and works in Auckland, New Zealand. Kieran Rynhart (Illustrator) Kieran Rynhart is a freelance illustrator who in 2010 was selected as one of Luerzers Archive Best 200 Illustrators Worldwide. He creates his beautiful, distinctive and evocative images using a mixture of traditional and digital techniques, and works on a wide range of commissions from children's picture books to commercial graphics and music videos. He is the illustrator of The New Zealand Art Activity Book by Helen Lloyd (Te Papa, 2013), If I Was a Banana by Alexandra Tylee (Gecko, 2016) and Seagull, Seagull by James K Baxter (Gecko, 2020). He lives in Wellington, New Zealand.