The Midnight Train to Avalon

About this book:

When the 116th Street subway station exhales a draft that smells of brass and pine instead of brake dust, sixteen-year-old Maya Lin discovers Platform Zero—a cathedral of iron and glass buried impossibly deep beneath Manhattan, where a train forged from gunmetal and starlight waits at midnight sharp. The Avalon Express doesn't run on electricity or coal; it runs on bargains. And three days ago, Maya's missing brother Leo boarded it, trading his future for a ticket to the Citadel at the End of Time.

Now Maya is a stowaway on a locomotive that crosses subterranean seas of silver fog, passes floating leviathans in skies gears-turn-constellations, and stops at stations where the fare is paid in memories, shadows, or years of your life. The Conductor collects debts in a forward car no passenger should enter. A grey-suited ghost in the dining car whispers that Leo has until the grand clock strikes thirteen to break his curse—or become another eternal rider, forgotten by the world above.

Armed with a brass flashlight, three sketchbooks, and a pocket watch engraved with her brother's initials, Maya has twenty-six stations to outwit riddles, survive the Derailed Express, and navigate tracks woven from starlight and rust. But the Midnight Line doesn't just travel through space—it unspools time itself. And the closer she gets to the Terminal, the more she realizes: the only way to save Leo may be to pay a fare she can't afford.