Twelve-year-old Todd is the last boy left in Prentisstown. Germ warfare between the settlers who founded Todd’s community and the native inhabitants of the planet led to the death of all women and girls when Todd was still a baby. The men who survived were left with Noise—the audible thoughts of every nearby living being, both human and animal. Noise can’t be shut out, and the chaos can be overwhelming. But in the woods one day, Todd senses a blank space, an absence of Noise. Todd’s two guardians have an unexpected response: They produce a backpack full of supplies and tell Todd he must run away: His life is in danger if he does not flee. On the run, Todd meets Preacher, the Prentisstown minister, and discovers the source of the mysterious “silence”—an orphaned girl about his age whose thoughts he cannot hear, and whom Preacher seems intent on harming. Todd’s fate and the fate of the girl are soon inextricably linked—at first by circumstance and soon by choice—in Patrick Ness’s taut and harrowing survival story. Ness explores the worst and best of human nature, from the corruption of power and religious fanaticism to compassion, understanding, tolerance, and friendship. At the story’s core is a fierce and tender boy trying to make sense of the present and past in a world where nothing he once thought true can be trusted, and the spirited girl and devoted dog who journey with him into the unknown. Readers will be stunned by the many twists, turns, and revelations Ness offers, one of which comes on the final page in this first volume of the “Chaos Walking” trilogy. (Age 12 and older)

One month before he is to be a man, Todd walks into the swamp with his talking dog and encounters “Quiet” and Viola—events that lead to the uncovering of the truth about Prentisstown, a male community exiled more than a dozen years earlier for its crimes against humanity. Ness provides a dystopian vision of settlers whose solution to the planet’s “Noise”—a con stant streaming of information from men’s thoughts but not women’s—in volves war and murder. In this taut thriller, Todd’s guardians help him escape from Prentisstown, but Todd and Viola barely survive when they are pursued by the town’s mad preacher and all-male army. 2009 USBBY Outstanding International Books List, 2009 Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize; 2008 Booktrust Teenage Prize, Branford Boase Shortlist, 2009 Carnegie Medal Shortlist, ALA Best Books for Young Adults, Booklist Editors’ Choice, Texas TAYSHAS List. hc

Originally published by Walker Books Great Britain, in 2008.