Magruder's Curiosity Cabinet

July 25, 2016
Coney Island's Dreamland amusement park subculture in 1904 New York City is cleverly dramatized in Wood's debut novel of carnival scams, frauds, hucksters, and sideshow freaks. Seventeen-year-old Kitty Hayward, visiting from London, is alone on Coney Island; her mother is missing, and she has no money or luggage. She falls in with Archie, a shameless con man, who introduces her to the art of the con and the world of sideshow attractions such as Magruder's Curiosity Cabinet, with its elaborate flea circus, shrunken heads, and Robonocchio, the Automatic Boy. Kitty is befriended by Coney Island's Unusuals, the men and women of the sideshows, including the Transparent Man and Zeph, the legless doorman at Magruder's. This fascinating world of rat orchestras and wacky acts is disrupted by an outbreak of pneumonic plagueâanimals and people die quickly and horribly, and Coney Island is quarantined. Kitty and her friends try to help plague victims while searching for her mother, aided by a few Normals; everyone on Coney Island is fighting both the disease and the public's fear and persecution of people who are different. To the panic and chaos, Wood adds a murder, arson, and a diabolical plot to assassinate President Theodore Roosevelt, making this an exciting, fast-paced, and fascinating yarn. Agent: Courtney Miller-Callihan, Handspun Literary.

April 15, 2016
A fast-paced tale of a historic amusement park under siege In 1904 Coney Island, the workers and residents of the Dreamland amusement park, people differently shaped and skilled, call themselves "Unusuals" and call the patrons who pay to watch them perform "Dozens," as in "a dime a dozen." Beneath Magruder's Curiosity Cabinet, a dusty dime museum of "trinkets and geewgaws" is Magruder's Unusual Tavern, where the locals gather, presided over by Zeph Andrews, a man with no legs, Rosalind, who is half man and half woman, and con man Archie. Among this crew appears Kitty Hayward, a posh English teenager new in town and recently evicted from the resort hotel where she last saw her gravely ill mother by a staff who claims never to have seen either one of them. The Unusuals take on the challenge of solving her mystery but soon have bigger problems on their hands. The streets are clogged with dead rats, and tourists given to sudden bouts of coughing have been made to disappear, just as Kitty's mother was. Debut author Wood manages a large cast and a complicated story with a light touch and has a knack for capturing a character with a deft phrase. The son of the owner of Dreamland was "born at the front of the line" and has enjoyed "a glittering lifetime of yes." Wood keeps the plot moving at a page-turning clip, sometimes sacrificing deeper insights into the occasionally cloying eccentricities of the characters and their slightly implausible allegiances--particularly near the end, when the scenes become screenplay-short and focused solely on action and dialogue. An entertaining, well-researched, if sometimes superficial beach read about a famous beach.

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May 15, 2016
A young Englishwoman searches for her ailing mother in 1904 on Coney Island, where the people she has previously met pretend not to recognize her. A black, legless shop manager with a wry sense of humor sells tickets to tourists during the day and tends bar for carny folks at night, and a man who alternates between dressing as a man and a woman is always there to assist his friends. These characters represent just a fraction of the diverse cast in Wood's tale, misfits who quickly band together when a plague runs rampant across New York's favorite boardwalk. Combining their quirks and strengths, they aid the afflicted and hinder a committee intent on concealing the epidemic. On every page, Wood explores the grungy yet wondrous dichotomy of living as an Unusual on Coney Island, and although the overall conflict is dark, the insights into carny life make for a fascinating and enlightening story. A great vacation novel, although readers may wonder if the hotel staff is part of a government conspiracy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)