Description
Product Description
In this second installment in the New York Times bestselling series from Edgar Award winner James Ponti, the young group of spies returns for another international adventure perfect for fans of Spy School and Mrs. Smith’s Spy School for Girls.
After thwarting a notorious villain at an eco-summit in Paris, the City Spies are gearing up for their next mission. Operating out of a base in Scotland, this secret team of young agents working for the British Secret Intelligence Service’s MI6 division have honed their unique skills, such as sleight of hand, breaking and entering, observation, and explosives. All of these allow them to go places in the world of espionage where adults can’t.
Fourteen-year-old Sydney is a surfer and a rebel from Bondi Beach, Australia. She’s also a field ops specialist for the City Spies. Sydney is excited to learn that she’ll be going undercover on the marine research vessel the
Sylvia Earle. But things don’t go exactly as planned, and while Sydney does find herself in the spotlight, it’s not in the way she was hoping.
Meanwhile, there’s been some new intel regarding a potential mole within the organization, offering the spies a lead that takes them to San Francisco, California. But as they investigate a spy who died at the Botanical Gardens, they discover that they are also being investigated. And soon, they’re caught up in an exciting adventure filled with rogue missions and double agents!
This mission is hot! The City Spies are a go!
About the Author
James Ponti is the
New York Times bestselling author of three middle grade book series: the all-new City Spies, about an unlikely squad of five kids from around the world who form an elite MI6 Spy Team; the Edgar Award–winning Framed! series, about a pair of tweens who solve mysteries in Washington, DC; and the Dead City trilogy, about a secret society that polices the undead living beneath Manhattan. His books have appeared on more than fifteen different state award lists and he is the founder of a writers group known as the Renegades of Middle Grade. James is also an Emmy–nominated television writer and producer who has worked for many networks including Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, PBS, History, and Spike TV, as well as NBC Sports. He lives with his family in Orlando, Florida. Find out more at JamesPonti.com.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1: The ‘Sylvia Earle’, North Sea
1. The
Sylvia Earle, North Sea
IT WAS JUST AFTER DAWN, so the black-clad hijackers were barely visible as they moved with military precision across the deck of the marine research vessel
Sylvia Earle. There were seven of them, and they wore special nonslip tactical shoes that gripped the damp metal surface, and balaclava ski masks that concealed their identities and shielded them from the cold ocean air. Virtually all of the ship’s passengers and crew were still asleep, so the intruders faced no resistance as they stormed the bridge and caught the duty officer by surprise.
No alarm was sounded.
No desperate call for help was transmitted over the radio.
That meant the best hope to save the
Sylvia Earle was one deck below, only half awake and yawning as she groggily looked for her best friend. There was no precision in her movements, and her pajamas were comfortable, not tactical: neon blue sweatpants, a Ravenclaw T-shirt, and wool socks decorated with cartoon narwhals. According to the ship’s manifest, her name was Christina Diaz, but that was just a cover identity created by the British Secret Intelligence Service. Among her fellow MI6 agents, she was Brooklyn.
She was also twelve years old.
Brooklyn had been awakened not by the arrival of the hijackers, but rather the endless snoring of two of her cabinmates. She turned on a small reading light above her bed to see if the same fate had befallen her friend Sydney, only to find Sydney’s bunk empty. At first, she assumed her fellow spy was d