Product Description

Strange things happen at midnight in the town of Bixby, Oklahoma. Time freezes. Nobody moves. For one secret hour each night, the town belongs to the dark creatures that haunt the shadows. Only a small group of people know about the secret hour - only they are free to move about the midnight time. These people call themselves Midnighters. Each one has a different power that is strongest at midnight: Seer, Mindcaster, Acrobat, Polymath. For years the Midnighters and the dark creatures have shared the secret hour, uneasily avoiding one another. All that changes when the new girl with an unmistakable midnight aura appears at Bixby High School. Jessica Day is not an outsider like the other Midnighters. She acts perfectly normal in every way. But it soon becomes clear that the dark creatures sense a hidden power in Jessica ...and they're determined to stop her before she can use it.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #70181 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Review
'Kept me reading way past midnight!' Garth Nix 'Fast-paced and spooky - a good read for the dark hours' Ursula K. Le Guin 'Intriguing and provocative. The sequels will be worth waiting for.' Locus

About the Author
Scott Westerfeld is a software designer and composer. He lives in New York and Sydney.

Customer Reviews

Secret Hour start of a gripping series.
I work in a library and a girl came in asking for this book, after searching for a while on the shelf, and her telling me she really wanted it to read because she had been told it was amazing, we found it, but it made me curious to find out what all the fuss was about and i wasn't disappointed.
The story has a really good plot line and keeps you hooked throughout, the idea of a secret hour in the day when time freezes and only those born at midnight can see it is an excellent idea and works really well, you can really connect with the characters and feel your heart racing for them at points in the story where things get a bit hairy!
Scott Westerfeld has created a terrific series and after reading this one, you will be begging for more, which you can get from teh other two in the series, 'Touching Darkness' and 'Blue Noon'.
I highly recommend these books, they are truly grippping reads that will grab you and maintain the magic no matter how many times you read them.
so go on, try it!!

Courtesy of Teens Read Too
Jessica Day has just moved to Bixby, Oklahoma from Chicago with her family. Still trying to find her niche in the local highschool, she's noticed by a group of students who are very different from your average teens. Not to mention that her dreams at night are becoming very, very vivid--such as the fact that for one hour at midnight, time seems to literally stand still.

Such is the life of the Midnighters, a group of teens who were born at midnight and have the ability to see the "blue time", the twenty-fifth hour of the day where time stands still for everyone else. Each of the group has a special power, both in and out of the blue time--Rex is a Seer, Dess is a Polymath, Melissa is a Mindcaster, and Jonathan is an Acrobat.

Jess is, of course, skeptical at first that time is actually standing still, and that her new rag-tag group of friends has special powers. But soon unmistakeable proof arises that the arrival of Jessica Day in Bixby is causing change--the creatures of the blue time are becoming dangerous and seem to want her dead.

Jess needs to find out her own special power before something bad happens to the town and it's midnight inhabitants. As the group struggle to keep the night creatures away, it's up to Jess to discover which power she possesses that's making everyone so nervous.

I LOVED this book! A totally original concept, Scott Westerfeld has created a series with truly interesting characters and crystal-clear visualization. I can't wait to read the next book in the series, to see where the Midnighters go from here.

Definitely a recommended read!

Reviewed by: Jennifer Wardrip, aka "The Genius"

Well written and gripping!
I discovered this book by accident, but I fell in love imediatly and wanted more! And thank God there were 2 more books!
I love the first one, this one, grips you from the beginning and never let's you go... If you lose concentration, you may not make it alive (which is more about heroes, not reader:))
Girl moves to small town where she is drown to strange crowd of goth looking teenagers, but not all as it seems, they are the good ones and trying to survive in the midnight blue hour when ancient things go bump and no technology works is a harsh reality of this odd group of outsiders, because they are the only ones moving in blue hour...

This book is amazing, just like the rest of trilogy!