Skulduggery Pleasant

Skulduggery Pleasant
Derek Landy

The skeleton detective is coming back to life… again! It’s the tenth, triumphant novel in the Skulduggery Pleasant series, and it will rearrange your world.Skulduggery and Valkyrie are back in the tenth instalment in the bestselling Skulduggery Pleasant series – an incredible and unexpected treat for the legions of fans around the world.We can’t say much but we can say this: Skulduggery and Valkyrie are going to team up with beloved characters from the first 9 books as well as an all-new cast, including new teen co-star Omen Darkly, for an adventure that takes the story to truly global proportions… while answering questions that go right back to the beginning.And Derek says this: “I was halfway through Last Stand of Dead Men, I think, when I realised that I had more stories to tell. I told myself that if Skulduggery and Valkyrie survived the series, I would leave the option open of returning to their world. There were still secrets I need to reveal, after all, and there were still horrors they had to face. They survived the first series. But they’re really going to wish they hadn’t.”

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2017

First published in this edition in the United States of America by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2019

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

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Skulduggery Pleasant rests his weary bones on the web at:

www.skulduggerypleasant.co.uk (http://www.skulduggerypleasant.co.uk)

Derek Landy blogs under duress at

www.dereklandy.blogspot.com (http://www.dereklandy.blogspot.com)

Text copyright © Derek Landy 2017

Skulduggery Pleasant

Derek Landy

Skulduggery Pleasant logo

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

Skulduggery Pleasant ©

Derek Landy

Cover design © blacksheep-uk.com (http://blacksheep-uk.com)

Cover illustration © Neil Swabb

Derek Landy asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

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Source ISBN: 9780008266462

Ebook Edition © ISBN: 9780008266479

Version: 2019-05-02

This book is dedicated to Yve.

Yve, our friendship is like a fine wine: it improves with age, is fragrant and ebullient, and it has aromas of mulberries and pencil lead and …

No. No, that’s not it.

Our friendship is less like wine and more like a journey. It has twists and turns and sometimes you lose the signal for the radio and find yourself driving around in circles thanks to the cheap sat nav you bought from that guy with the …

No, that’s not it either.

Our friendship is less like wine, and less like a journey, and more like a … a …

Listen, Yve, they’re going to print in the morning and I have to get this dedication done in the next few minutes but I really can’t think of anything that adequately describes our friendship so it’d be much easier if we just weren’t friends any more.

Really sorry.

In the nothing before the beginningthere was a thought. And the thoughtbecame the beginning.

Contents

Cover (#u032bc793-0600-55cf-9c1a-3c13c6800d9f)

Title Page (#ue0bbb0d4-e218-5ae5-94a0-359784a31a46)

Copyright (#u40d5bd53-3181-59a6-94d9-1eb7963b9144)

Dedication (#ufa64bc10-9caa-56d8-ac6f-417ba749e157)

Epigraph (#u3bf164fa-399e-5e90-b153-e6b1cfe98cfd)

Chapter 1 (#uc826cb8b-58f1-5177-b57e-3e506e7938f5)

Chapter 2 (#u52f3fb10-71a3-5602-b22d-09dfcfb192fc)

Chapter 3 (#u5cf403a8-b12e-5e21-a928-32ad6cf9095b)

Chapter 4 (#uc3f3cf04-4e07-54d6-9dfd-698b311f4d4c)

Chapter 5 (#ua7c30d0b-466b-5da6-a479-77987572ca6c)

Chapter 6 (#u7e68be3a-712b-568f-b156-8bd2476549a8)

Chapter 7 (#ue29c8bcd-4e7e-5f22-8f3e-bbb823392f30)