Alice--slight introvert, crossword compositor--works at PopCo, a globally successful and slightly sinister toy company. Lured by their CEO to a Thought Camp out on the moors, PopCo's creatives must invent the ultimate product for teenage girls.
Meanwhile, Alice receives bizarre, encrypted messages she suspects relate to her grandfather's decoding of a centuries-old manuscript that many--including her long-disappeared father--believe leads to buried treasure. Its key, she's sure, is engraved on the necklace she's been wearing since she was ten.
Using the skills she learned from her grandparents and teaching us aspects of cryptanalysis, Alice discovers the source of these creepy codes. Will this lead her to the mysterious treasure or another, even more carefully guarded secret?
"The code-breaking and -making heroine of [this] smart, engaging novel takes a critical view of the corporate marketing of cool . . . a captivating heroine."--Publishers Weekly
"This book might just change your life." -- "Independent on Sunday"
PFTACJVPRDN?
ARE YOU HAPPY?
Alice Butler has been receiving some very odd messages all anonymous, all written in code.
Are they from someone at PopCo, the profit-hungry toy company that employs her? From her long-lost father? Or does someone else know her family secret?
Through codes, math, and the sense her grandparents gave her that she could change the world, Alice grows from recluse orphan to burgeoning vigilante, and may even uncover the meaning of the key inscribed on the necklace she has worn since she was ten.
Scarlett Thomas is the author of "Bright Young Things, Going Out, PopCo, "and "Our Tragic Universe."
Praise for "PopCo
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"Enough code-breaking tips, puzzles and graphs, charts, postscripts and appendixes to satisfy that other mathematician storyteller, Lewis Carroll." The New York Times Book Review
"A sort of Harriet-the-Spy-meets-Douglas-Coupland with a Treasure Island twist." --Daily Candy
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