Timeless, beautiful, and haunting, spirals connect four episodes, from prehistory through the far future, in this Michael L. Printz Honor Book.

In prehistory, a girl picks up a charred stick and makes the first written signs.

Tens of centuries later, the treacherous waters of Golden Beck take Anna, who people call a witch.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, in the halls of a Long Island hospital at the beginning of the twentieth century, a mad poet watches the ocean and knows the horrors it hides

And there in the far future, as an astronaut faces his destiny on the first spaceship sent from earth to colonize another world.

Each of the characters in these mysterious linked stories embarks on a journey of discovery and survival; carried forward through the spiral of time, none will return to the same place.

The Ghosts of Heaven is a mesmerizing novel from Printz Award winner Marcus Sedgwick, author of Midwinterblood, Revolver, and She Is Not Invisible.

A Michael L. Printz Honor Book

“Intriguing . . . [the] sense of mystery propels the novel forward.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Wondrously metaphysical, Sedgwick's novel will draw teens in and invite them to share in the awe-inspiring (and sometimes terrifying) order and mystery that surround us all.” —School Library Journal, starred review

“This complex masterpiece is for sophisticated readers of any age. Haunting.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Satisfyingly brain-teasing.” —The Horn Book

“Readers who like untangling puzzles will enjoy parsing the threads knitting together this corkscrew of tales.” —Publisher’s Weekly

Marcus Sedgwick has always been fascinated with spirals, which occur throughout nature from the microscopic to the interstellar. Fundamentally elegant and mesmerizing, many cultures and individuals have ascribed a special meaning to the form. He is the author of more than a dozen books for young adults, most recently She Is Not Invisible, Midwinterblood, which won the 2014 Michael L. Printz Award, White Crow, and Revolver, a Printz Award Honor Book. He lives near Cambridge, England.