By Shannon Messenger
The first five Keeper of the Lost Cities novels in one box: Sophie Foster's telepathy is only the first secret, and each book is a doorstop, so the set lasts and lasts.
Sophie Foster has heard other people's thoughts since she was five, which made ordinary life a lonely, confusing thing. Then she learns the truth: she isn't human, she's an elf, and there's a whole hidden world she was born to. This box holds the first five books of her story, Keeper of the Lost Cities, Exile, Everblaze, Neverseen, and Lodestar, as Sophie leaves the only family she's known, starts over at an elite academy where everyone has powers, and pulls at the mystery of who she really is and who's been keeping it from her. Each book is a doorstop, so five of them is well over three thousand pages, and the series keeps going after that.
For the fast reader who wants to move into a series and stay there, this is a whole address to live at. Five books in the box, each one a brick, so even a child who devours everything will be busy a good long while, and the series runs to nine and more behind it. It scratches the hidden-magic-school itch, but it's really a slow-burn mystery about who Sophie is that deepens book after book: the gaps in her memory, who's protecting her and who isn't. Fall for the first one and there's a mountain of pages waiting.