Inside the snow globe on my father’s desk, there was a penguin wearing a red-and-white-striped scarf. When I was little my father would pull me into his lap and reach for the snow globe. He would turn it over, letring all the,snow collect on the top, then quickly invert it. The two of us watched the snow fall gently around the penguin. The penguin was alone in there, I thought, and I worried for him. When I told my father this, he said, "Don’t worry, Susie; he has a nice life. He’s trapped in a perfect world. "

Sebold takes an enormous risk in her wonderfully strange debut novel: her narrator, Susie Salmon, is dead-murdered at the age of fourteen by a disturbed neighbor- and speaks from the vantage of Heaven. Such is the author’s skill that from the first page this premise seems utterly believable A stunning achievement.

                       -- The NewYorker

A thriller... a shattering family drama.., deeply movin8 and ultimately redemptive.

               -- Los Angeles Times Book Review

An audacious novel The Lovely Bones shows us there are more important things in life than retribution. Like forgiveness, like love.

                      -- Chicago Tribune

The Lovely Bones takes the stuff of neighborhood tragedy-the unexplained disappearance of a child, the shattered family alone with its grief-and turns it into literature.

                 --New York Times Book Review

THE LOVELY BONES

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOURE

FIVE

SIX

SEVERN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

TIRTEEN

FORTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINTEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

BONES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS