Peculiar Syndrigast

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children 

by Ransom Riggs

Narrated by Jesse Bernstein

A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very curious photographs.

It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that makes for a thrilling listening experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for a good reason. And somehow--impossible though it seems--they may still be alive. A spine-tingling fantasy, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows.

I liked this book. It takes us into the strange lives of gifted children. Peculiar is a levitating girl, an invisible boy and the bird which they call Miss Peregrine. A peregrine falcon is her moniker of course. She is the headmistress of this home and takes good care of the children.
Jacob is different too, but everyone else thinks he's crazy. His grandfather would tell him stories of children with different abilities. At first, he didn't believe the stories his grandfather told were real, but only fairytales and he desperately wanted to find him. After Abe is killed, a psychiatrist was called in to help Jacob through his recurring nightmares. BUT..... Dr. Golan is a very dangerous man.

Jacob journeys to Cairnholm with his father, where Miss Peregrine's home is and where Abe spent most of his childhood, intent on investigating and resolving his many questions about the life and death of his grandfather. Abe could see monsters (Wights and Hollowgast) but so could Jacob. Seeing monsters were their gift that had an extraordinary purpose.
"...and there is the hidden branch---the crypto-sapiens, if you will---who are called syndrigast, or 'peculiar spirit' in the ancient language of my ancestors. As you have no doubt surmised, we here are of the next type."
-Miss Peregrine to Jacob Portman
"I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never normal. I had only failed to notice how extraordinary it was. Likewise, I never imagined that home might be something I would miss. As we stood loading our boats in the breaking dawn, on a brand new precipice of before and after, I thought of everything I was about to leave behind— and then I realized that leaving wouldn't be like I had imagined, like casting off weight. Their memory was something tangible and dense, and I would carry it with me. And yet my old life was as impossible to return to as the children's bombed house. The doors had been blown off our cages." — Miss Peregrine's home for peculiar children

HOLLOW CITY [Miss Peregrine #2] is to be released sometime in January 2014. You can Preorder on Amazon

The first book was about opening a door and discovering a world. In the second book, we get to explore that world. But it's not tourist trip --it's a world facing a mortal and existential threat, from both the Axis powers and from the Corrupted: the wights and the hollows. Jacob and his new friends embark upon a death-defying, time-trotting adventure to save their ymbrynes, their way of life, and perhaps the very world, and as they struggle to derail their enemies' disastrous plans, they get themselves into all manner of peculiar and dangerous situations, meet all sorts of curious beings and unusual people, and explore places they never could've imagined.

Book Trailer

About the Author

Ransom Riggs is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. He is also the author of Talking Pictures (Harper Collins, 2012) and The Sherlock Holmes Handbook (Quirk, 2008). He is a graduate of the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts and lives in Los Angeles.