It began with a dream—devout Aunt Mireille’s to be precise. The baby boy will be dead by his fourteenth birthday, declared St. Constance. Con sequently, instead of calling him by his given name, Paul, the boy’s family referred to him as le pauvre—poor one. On the playground—when Paul achieved the appropriate age to attend school—and with children’s language being vagrant, Pauvre transmogrified into Poivre: Pepper. Hence, on his fourteenth birthday, hoping to spare his parents and devout aunt’s sensibili ties, Pepper Roux dauntlessly departs to meet his irrevocable fate. The humor of Pepper’s madcap adventures is reminiscent of McCaughrean’s Stop the Train! (HarperCollins, 2003). Geraldine McCaughrean has been awarded the Carnegie Medal, the Guardian Prize, the Whitbread Children’s Book Award, and the Michael L. Printz Award. lmp

Originally published by Oxford University Press Great Britain, in 2009.

Pepper's fourteenth birthday is a momentous one.

It's the day he's supposed to die.

Everyone seems resigned to it—even Pepper, although he would much prefer to live. But can you sidestep Fate? Jump sideways into a different life? Naïve and trusting, Pepper sets a course through dangerous waters, inviting disaster and mayhem at every turn, one eye on the sky for fear of angels, one on the magnificent possibilities of being alive.

New York Times bestselling and Printz Award-winning author GeraldineMcCaughrean has created a gripping tale filled with dark humor and daringescapades, where the key to a boy's lifelies in facing his own death.

Join him on the run—if you can keep up.