GOLDEN & GREY (AN UNREMARKABLE BOY AND A RATHER REMARKABLE GHOST)

Tom Golden and Grey Arthur are misfits. Bemoaning their respective dismal lives one day, they utter the words “Life’s not fair” at the same moment and set a remarkable chain of events in motion. Grey’s a ghost who hasn’t found his proper niche, and Tom’s the new kid who’s friendless and tormented at school. Grey decides his destiny lies in becoming Tom’s “Invisible Friend” and getting him out of trouble. This becomes more complicated when Tom begins actually to see Grey and a whole host of other denizens of the ghost world. This charming and funny debut by a British comic heads toward a suspenseful climax as a con man kidnaps Tom in a nefarious plot to force Grey to help him win lottery millions. It’s up to Grey and Tom’s other spectral chums to effect an ectoplasmic rescue in a fast-paced, perfectly plausible read that will have readers wishing they, too, had such remarkable friends, ghostly or otherwise. (Fiction. 9-12)