Wake Up Missing

When 12-year-old Cat Grayson is sent to the International Center for Advanced Neurology (I-CAN), an elite clinic specializing in head injuries, she hopes their revolutionary techniques will cure her post-concussion trauma. Instead, she discovers a diabolical plot to use the young patients at the clinic as test subjects in an attempt to recreate some of the greatest scientists of all time. Rather than have their minds overwritten with those of Thomas Edison, Marie Curie, Robert Oppenheimer, and others, Cat and her new friends flee I-CAN, attempting to elude their erstwhile captors in the Everglades as they seek help. But with killers and alligators at their heels, they have to rely on their own ingenuity—and the talents of a resurrected genius. Messner (Hide and Seek) delivers an exciting middle-grade thriller inspired by cutting-edge science and historical events, drawing on the Manhattan Project and Tuskegee experiments to weave something new and interesting. Sadly, the characterizations pale in comparison to the atmospheric setting and tense story line. Ages 10–14. Agent: Jennifer Laughran, Andrea Brown Literary Agency. (Sept.)