Shadows of the Silver Screen

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Penny Treadwell is the feisty thirteen-year-old heiress of the bestselling magazine The Penny Dreadful. In the second book of this electrifying series, a mysterious filmmaker approaches The Penny Dreadful with a proposal to turn the magazine's sinister stories - supposedly written by Mongtomery Filch, but actually created by Penny herself - into motion pictures.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

School Library Journal Review

Gr 4-7-In Twelve Minutes to Midnight, readers meet Penelope Tredwell, the 13-year-old newspaper heiress and ghostwriter who pens tales of horror and mystery as Montgomery Flinch. She must keep her true identity secret, going so far as to hire an actor to play Montgomery at public appearances. In Shadows of the Silver Screen, a filmmaker wants to transform Penelope's stories into a motion picture. The protagonist soon finds that her terrifying tales are bleeding into reality. An atmospheric and spine-tingling series for middle graders who love old-fashioned mysteries. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

In this freestanding follow-up to Twelve Minutes to Midnight (2014), 13-year-old Penelope Treadwell takes the grim and gory stories of her late-Victorian magazine, Penny Dreadful, to the pictures! Penny's identity as author of the magazine's wildly popular tales (pseudonymously penned by Montgomery Flinch) is still a secret, so when a slick movie director offers to adapt one of Flinch's stories for the screen, Penny tags along on public appearances with the bumptious actor she's hired to play Flinch to keep him from spilling the beans. Penny is skeptical about the appeal of the fashionable new moving pictures, but when events take a dire turn, she and the cast investigate the goings-on and discover that not only does the newfangled movie camera seem to have the power to summon ghosts but the director is an utter madman. Though this installment in Edge's series is less complex than the first, it is nonetheless great fun and delightfully suspenseful, balancing a blend of gothic fantasy with a well-constructed homage to penny-dreadful tales.--Goldsmith, Francisca Copyright 2014 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

In this sequel to Twelve Minutes to Midnight (2014), young author/publisher Penelope Tredwell becomes ensnared in a devious scheme to turn one of her thrillers into a motion picture. Orphan heiress of the Penny Dreadful, 13-year-old Penelope has successfully transformed the magazine into a "bestselling sensation" with her serialized "tales of terror." When sleazy moviemaker Edward Gold approaches her hoping to make a film of her The Daughter of Darkness, Penelope's wary until she falls under the spell of Gold's Vritscope, a new sort of movie camera that can both record and project sound as well as images. En route to filming at remote Eversholt Manor, Penelope discovers Gold's really using her story to expose the true story of dastardly Lord Eversholt, who caused the death of his daughter, Amelia, years ago. When Penelope begins seeing Amelia's ghost, she realizes the Vritscope can capture the ethereal forms of the deceased and restore them to life. With her own life fading and Amelia's returning, Penelope must stop Gold. Once again, Edge's deft use of Gothic elements ensures maximum chills and suspense as Penelope and pals race to outwit Gold and his contraption in a dramatic conclusion. The spunky heroine is a captivating one, as is her deliciously sensational adventure. (Historical mystery. 8-12) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.