The New Arrival

Twelve minutes. That's how long it took eleven-year-old Della Frank to accept she was dead.

For a girl who lives her life by logic and checklists, dying on the last day of summer holidays is more than a tragedy-it's a massive logistical error. Della was supposed to be starting secondary school in two days, not hovering three centimetres above the floor of her old primary school.

Welcome to the Ghost Shift.

After 3:15 PM, when the living students go home, Willowmere Primary belongs to the dead. Under the "formidable" (and very Victorian) gaze of Headmistress Grimshaw, centuries of former students attend ghost lessons in Advanced Moaning and Creative Rattling, all while waiting to finish the "Unfinished Business" that keeps them stuck.

But Della isn't interested in a hundred years of ghost football or tasteless cafeteria food. She has a best friend to reach, a secret to confess, and a silent boy in the living world named Ibrahim who might be her only way to send a message across the "overlap window".

In a world where the living and dead occupy the same corridors, Della must learn that some things are more important than being practical-and that sometimes, the only way to move on is to finally speak up.