[The History of Arcadia 02] • Lily the Silent

"Look inside this world and find wonder." --KATE BERNHEIMER, editor of "My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me"

Lily leads a serene life in Arcadia until the forces of Megalopolis invade. Rescued from slavery by a prince of Megalopolis, Lily is sent to retrieve a very important key. Aided by her friends, her dog Rex, and even Death herself, Lily's adventures take her from the Moons to the Bottom of the Sea, and finally back to Megalopolis, where she faces the decision of her life. Will she choose True Love and relinquish the key to those in Power or will she risk everything for who she is and return the key to Arcadia?

Narrated by Lily's daughter, Sophia the Wise, this is a story about a girl who learns to live by her own light and--no matter how reluctantly--become the queen her people need. Full of Arcadian legends, it is also a fairy tale within a fairy tale about a troubled world not unlike our own, as well as a beautifully illustrated sequel to "Snotty Saves the Day," which critics and booksellers hailed as "Lewis Carroll with footnotes by Jonathan Swift," while comparing it to authors whose work can be savored by readers of all ages: Susanna Clark, C.S. Lewis, George Orwell, and L. Frank Baum.

Tod Davies lives with her husband and her two dogs in the alpine valley of Colestin, in Oregon, where she discovered the first Arcadian manuscript, and at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, in Boulder, Colorado.

Illustrator Mike Madrid, a native San Franciscan, is the author of "The Supergirls: Fashion, Feminism, Fantasy, and the History of Comic Book Heroines."