Excerpt from The Calder Game

Two Calders are missing. One is a sculpture. One is a boy.

Blue Balliett's The Calder Game centers around a maze of a mystery. Get lost in the book with the first chapter.

Chapter One

The setting is a very old town in England. It is dawn, a pale October dawn that pours through the streets like cream, erasing line and dissolving shadow. Red ivy stirs against damp stone; the houses are stone, the walls are stone, the street is stone. A lace curtain has escaped through an open window and waves unseen in the early light. Now a black cat blinks, stretches, and slowly crosses the empty square, stepping carefully around a raised sign that reads, MINOTAUR, ALEXANDER CALDER, 1959.

Someone sneezes behind closed shutters. A light goes on in a kitchen and a man in plaid pajamas fills a brass kettle. In other houses, butter sizzles and silverware clinks. The first truck of the day rattles across cobblestones and comes to a sudden stop. The driver sits for a moment looking straight ahead, his mouth open, then hops out and hurries to a nearby door. He bangs the knocker twice, sticks his head in, and shouts, "It's gone! The sculpture is gone!"

Soon enough, the town realizes that a boy is also gone.