Somewhere

Age range 10 to 14

Elsie Clarke’s home life is turned upside down when a German air raid on London brings the war to her doorstep and her house becomes a temporary refuge shelter for survivors.

Further surprises lie in store when she returns for her second year at Miss Coleridge’s Academy for Gifted Youths. Elsie is desperate to prove herself as a Guardian but a few terrible mistakes causes Elsewhere’s trust in her to falter. To make matters worse, Gifted kids around the world have gone missing, taken somewhere the Gateways can’t reach, leaving Elsie powerless.

Then a mysterious figure appears, offering Elsie a tempting solution – a way to use Gifts without Elsewhere’s permission. But is the power worth the price?

About the Author

Shelby Matheson is a born-and-raised Australian currently residing in the quiet, beachside town of Hervey Bay, Queensland. She has a bachelor’s in journalism and creative writing, and a graduate diploma in editing and publishing from the University of Southern Queensland. She has been writing full-length novels since she was fourteen and has always known that being an author is the only career for her. In her spare time, she enjoys video games, drawing, crochet, collecting books (and even reading them), but her greatest passion will always be writing and escaping to the worlds in her head.

Her debut novel, Elsewhere, was inspired by the sense of wonder and awe of classic children’s novels such as the Chronicles of Narnia, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Secret Garden and more. Its sequel, Somewhere, continues to pay tribute to these classics through Easter eggs and similar tropes. The series stays true to the timeline and facts of World War I, exploring the horrors of that time through the eyes of a child, creating a symbolic parallel between the pains of adolescence and the extreme changes that the world went through during the war.