Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs caught my eye when I was browsing through the top 110 books on the NY Times list.
As a child, Jacob formed a close bond with his grandfather over his bizarre tales and photos of levitating girls and invisible boys. His grandfather grew up on a small Welsh island in an "orphanage" that his parents sent him to in order to save him from Hitler's plans during WWII.
Under suspicious circumstances, Jacob, age 16, found his grandfather lying and dying in the woods behind his (grandfather's) ransacked home. Before his grandfather took his last breath, he told Jacob that he was sorry he didn't tell him a long time ago, but added, "There's no time [now]." He breathed into Jacob's ear: "Find the bird. In the loop. On the other side of the old man's grave. September third, 1940." With his last bit of strength, he added, "Emerson--the letter. Tell them what happened..." (pg 33). Jacob then saw a face in the woods--a face that was in his childhood nightmares. It was the last thing he saw before he blacked out.
His parents sent him to therapy because he wasn't sleeping due to nightmares and trying to decode his grandfather's last words. Upon cleaning our his grandfather's house, Jacob is given a mysterious letter, found inside a book of poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson, that brings him to the island where his grandfather grew up.
He soon finds the children from the photographs, alive and well, despite the islanders’ insistence that all were killed when the German's bombed the island in 1940.
I could not put the book down! Once Jacob gets to the island, things his grandfather said to him start to make sense. As he pieces the puzzle together, he realizes that he's in danger. It's definitely an exciting page-turner, and the photographs make the book that much better. A must read.
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