Book description
Fast-paced, engaging young adult fiction about a group of young people
gifted with an extra-sensory talent. The first novel of a à  thrillerÃ
 trilogyNicky is asked to read some of her work aloud in class. She
dreads ità Â-and, just as she startsà Â-she finds herself elsewhere.
Transported. For Nicky is one of a select few people who can will
themselves away not just in mind, but in body. She has the gift of
teleportation. Ità  s a rare, genetic ability, and a sinister,
anonymous group called the Project want to use her à  giftà  for
their own ends. Nicky finds herself whisked off to a nameless desert
site. Here, she and four other teenagers, who are also à  travellersà Â
, are educated and trained for search and rescue missions. As these
missions grow more frightening, more perilous, the five start to form
closer friendships. Yet it is only when they realise that the Project
wants them to breed more travellers like themselves, that Nicky, Paul
and the others, find the impetus to form an escape plan. In a stark,
direct style, Thieves pulls you right into this strange, sinister world
of gifted young adults exploited by an anonymous group. This novel is
above all a thriller. It comments on much that is surreal in our own
supposedly ordinary times. A remarkable and original debut and the first
in a trilogy that includes Anywhere But Here (2008) and Real Life
(2009). Ella West is the nom de plume of Karen Trebilcock, who was
born in Invercargill, studied at the University of Otago and has worked
as a journalist. In 2006 she was awarded the Louis Johnson New Writer's
Bursary. She is married with two children and lives in Janefield, Otago.
