A soon-to-be siren finds herself responsible for the lives of her sisters--and the fisherman they curse--in this haunting debut novel. Lolly Salt has three beautiful sisters. When they're not in school or running their small town's diner, they're secretly luring ships to their doom from the cliffs of Starbridge Cove, Maine. With alluring voices that twelve-year-old Lolly has yet to grow into, the Salt sisters do the work mandated by the Sea Witch, a glamorously frightening figure determined to keep the girls under her control. With their mother dead after a mysterious car accident, and their father drowning in grief, the sisters carry on with their lives and duties until a local sea captain gets suspicious about the shipwrecks. On the day before her birthday, Lolly watches in helpless horror as her sisters are lured themselves by curse-reversing fishermen--and suddenly it's up to her and her best friend Jason to rescue the sirens of Starbridge Cove. Gr 4–6—Lolly Salt is living a double life. By day she fights exhaustion and acts like a normal middle school student, but at night she must follow her three beautiful older sisters as they are called by the Sea Witch to destroy fishing vessels using their magical siren song. Not yet a siren herself, Lolly will become one as soon as she turns 13, a fate she is desperate to avoid. Then a bigger problem arises when her best friend Jason's stepdad uses magic to trap her sisters and kidnap them, leaving only Lolly and Jason to save them. Woven into this compelling story are interesting ideas about good and bad and how people become who—or what—they are. As she tries to save her sisters, Lolly learns the devastating truth about why they became sirens in the first place. She must also uncover the origins of the Sea Witch, a quest that takes her back to the dark history of early American witch trials. Despite the serious subject matter, the characters are likable and the story proceeds with a light touch. VERDICT Beautifully written and vividly told, this is an excellent choice for thoughtful readers and a vehicle for classroom discussion.—Eliza Langhans, Hatfield Public Library, MA "spellbinding. . .the first-person narrative is grounded beautifully in the small joys of daily life." -The Washington Post, Best Books "A daringly original debut." ― Julie Berry, award-winning author of The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place Dana Langer is a New York based high school teacher and the author of Siren Sisters . She holds a BA in creative writing and an MA in teaching from Brandeis University where she received the Dafna Zamarripa-Gesundheit Fiction Prize. Siren Sisters Chapter 1 The siren sings so sweetly that she lulls the mariners to sleep. —Leonardo da Vinci Now that I know the truth, I sometimes picture my sisters in headlights, the way they would have looked on that cold February night, armed with shovels and pickaxes, and digging in the graveyard. They have Dad’s truck running, parked on the dirt road, and ropes they stole from a fishing boat. They’re wearing snow boots and Dad’s old work gloves, and they’re struggling not to slip on the ice. Of course, that’s how I see it in my imagination. Like most of our family stories, I don’t know all the facts and details. It’s the curse of the youngest sibling. I mean, maybe there weren’t any shovels. Maybe there was a backhoe or something. And maybe they didn’t leave the truck running and the headlights on. Maybe they had lanterns. But this is what I do know: They must have been terrified out there in the darkness, afraid of what they would find and afraid it wouldn’t work, that they’d put their lives in the hands of a vengeful sea witch for nothing. And also this: The three of them were the prettiest grave robbers in history. That I know for sure. One week earlier This is how it happens: We reach the cliffs at dawn, in the middle of an electrical storm. Lightning splits the sky, and a strange, wild wind howls through the trees and tangles our hair. We walk right up to the edge, where we can see the waves breaking on the rocks below, and my sisters hold hands and begin to sing. Their voices are pure and perfect, and their song is so sweet you can practically taste it; it’s the musical equivalent of strawberry lemonade on a hot summer day. I can’t sing like they can. Not yet, anyway. I try to join them, but every time I open my mouth, instead of that beautiful strawberry sound, it’s like the croaking of a frog. The musical equivalent of a lump of mashed potatoes. And so I just stand there in the rain and mouth the words. Out on the water, a cargo ship, a massive freighter stacked about twenty feet high, heads for shore. My sisters sing louder, and I cover my eyes with my hands and peek through my fingers. I want to be brave like they are. I want to act like I don’t care. But in case you don’t already know, a shipwreck is a terrible thing to see. There’s a tremendous crash, the sound of metal sc