Product Description

As gripping as "The Diamond of Drury Lane", this stunning second volume from Julia Golding sees Cat storm a gentleman's club, jump aboard a slave ship and enter the heart of the shadiest part of London - blindfolded! As the book opens, we discover that Pedro's slave master has come over from the West Indies to track the boy down and drag him back into slavery. Cat obviously decides she is not going to let that happen, but hereby makes herself another enemy. Soon, she finds she has the police on her tail...Cat is driven to flee the theatre and ends up going into hiding, passing herself off as a boy at Westminister school. Then Billy Shepherd turns up...Once again, Julia will have you captivated from page one.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #67889 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

Review
Hang on for the wild ride of Cat Royal's second adventure, after The Diamond of Drury Lane (2008). The redheaded firebrand sees her friend Pedro scale the heights as Ariel in Mr. Sheridan's production of The Tempest, only to find that his evil former master insists Pedro is still his slave. In trying to protect Pedro, Cat finds she must leave Drury Lane and hide herself - at her friend Lord Francis's school. The somewhat-stale trope of a girl in boys' clothing gets a few charming grace notes as Cat survives a beating and finds out how much easier (and harder) boys have it. The eerily scary Billy Boil continues to slither in and out of Cat's life, and she makes him a promise she will no doubt regret keeping. As the story rockets along, Cat makes both new enemies and new and stalwart friends. Some historical figures drift through these pages, the pace is quick and engaging and the colorful evocation of 1790s London will keep readers plunging on and awaiting the next installment. (glossary) (Historical fiction. 10-14) (Kirkus Reviews)

Synopsis
As gripping as "The Diamond of Drury Lane", this stunning second volume from Julia Golding sees Cat storm a gentleman's club, jump aboard a slave ship and enter the heart of the shadiest part of London - blindfolded! As the book opens, we discover that Pedro's slave master has come over from the West Indies to track the boy down and drag him back into slavery. Cat obviously decides she is not going to let that happen, but hereby makes herself another enemy. Soon, she finds she has the police on her tail...Cat is driven to flee the theatre and ends up going into hiding, passing herself off as a boy at Westminister school. Then Billy Shepherd turns up...Once again, Julia will have you captivated from page one.

About the Author
Julia Golding read English at Cambridge then joined the Foreign Office and served in Poland. Her work as a diplomat took her from the high point of town twinning in the Tatra Mountains to the low of inspecting the bottom of a Silesian coal mine. On leaving Poland, she exchanged diplomacy for academia and took a doctorate in the literature of the English Romantic Period at Oxford. She then joined Oxfam as a lobbyist on conflict issues, campaigning at the UN and with governments to lessen the impact of conflict on civilians living in war zones. Married with three children, Julia now lives in Oxford and works as a freelance writer. Cat Among The Pigeons is the sequel to the brilliant The Diamond of Drury Lane.

Customer Reviews

Cat Among the Pigeons
At 17, I'm older than the target audience for this book, but I firmly beleive that a good book should be readable to the young and old(er) alike. And Cat Among the Pigeons certainly meets this specification.

The best feature of this book, and the first 'The Diamond of Drury Lane' (read it before reading this) is the charecters. None of them are clean cut villains or perfectly holy and good heroes and heroines they're all somewhere in between. At times you want to scream at the charecters for being so mindless and stupid, whilst at other points you want to hug them for being so kind and good.

The best charecter in this, is probably Billy 'Boil' Sheperd, who gets a great deal of charecetr development here, he is clearly the villain in the first installment of the 'Den of Thieves' trilogy, but here the reader is totally in the dark with regards to his motivations and his alliances, his strange relationship with the books heroine Cat(herine) Royal, an orphan who is a ward of the theatre on Drury Lane, is very compelling, let me just say I cannot wait for the next installment in 2007!

The historical setting is well chosen and accurately portrayed, you really get a feel of how people lived back in the 18th century, although you may not realise it, you actually learn from the book, but this is overshadowed by how enjoyable the books are. I would say this book is a far betyter introduction to the period than any stuffy old history lesson.

I will not give you a synoposis of the book, for Amazon provides a very concise one, all I will say now is go out and buy a copy, for yourself, or for your children!

(Please note, I do not have my own acount, so I'm using my father's, I am certainly not a Mr Grant!)