Cold

by Mariko Tamaki

Genres: YA Mysteries & Thrillers

Synopsis

A boy, a body, a girl, a secret. From award-winning author Mariko Tamaki, Cold is a haunting YA audiobook about a shocking murder in a quiet town and four students who knew too much and said too little.

This is the story of a boy who died—and a girl who wants to know why.

Todd Mayer is dead. Now he's some sort of ghost, hovering over his body, which has just been found in the town park, naked and frozen in the snow. As detectives investigate Todd's homicide, talking to the very people who are responsible for how he died, Todd replays the events that lead him to his end in the park.

Georgia didn't know Todd. But she can’t stop thinking about him. Maybe because they’re both outcasts at their school, or because they’re both queer. It might also be because Georgia has a feeling she’s seen Todd somewhere before, somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be.

In the vein of The Lovely Bones, this dual narrative is told through the voices of Todd in his afterlife and Georgia as she uncovers the truth behind his death, resulting in an immersive, emotional, and provocative listen.

A Macmillan Audio production from Roaring Brook Press

Release date: February 8, 2022

Publisher: Roaring Brook Press

Print pages: 240

Sample

GEORGIA



THE STORY OF ME



THE FIRST STORY OF ME was written by my mother when I was four years old.

(Before I had any idea that it was possible to have a story of me, or an agent representing my interests.)

The book is called I Am Little and You Are Big. It is a bestseller. You have probably seen it in some kid’s toy box or in a display of books at your local bookstore. Maybe you read it when you were little and loved it.

In the book, which a reputable reviewer described as an “inventive and compelling retelling of ‘Hansel and Gretel,’” I am the little sister, Molly, lost in the woods with my older brother, Wally, the stand-in for my older brother, Mark.

The whole book is little me asking my big brother what things are. So I’m constantly like, “What is that?” and “Where are we going?”

In the book, Wally aka Mark just answers all my questions.

“What is that?”

“That is the moon.”

“What is THAT?”

“That’s a tree.”

I’m four and I don’t know what a tree is?

At one point in the book, I ask my big brother why he knows all this stuff and he says, “Because you are little and I am big.”

Maybe it’s not shocking that I’m not a fan of this book. Among the many my mother has published and the MULTITUDE that are basically about me, it is my least favorite. Partly because a book where a girl is walking around the woods clueless is not really the most modern retelling of the existing fairy tale (even if in this one the witch turns out to be nice and no one is threatened with getting eaten).

There’s also the fact that I spent a solid year of my life dressed up as the “me” of this book, in a little yellow dress and matching shoes and bonnet, going to bookstores and eating warm snack trays of cantaloupe and crackers and cheese, which does something to a person, if only turn them off cantaloupe forever.

Maybe I don’t like this book because it’s not me and yet somehow it’s me.

It’s like I never got a shot at being anything else.

Sometimes I feel like I’m standing in the woods, all covered in snow, and there’s already a set of footprints, somehow my footprints, that I’ve somehow already stomped into the ground without knowing it, a path I already walked stretching out in front of me.

And, really, most of the time I feel like I am lost, and all I want to do is ask questions.


Copyright © 2022 by Mariko Tamaki