Outside chance

One evening Edie is babysitting for a neighbour, Donna, who has repeatedly caught sight of an estranged friend from overseas.

What is troubling Donna, however, is that it seems she's been in the same place at the same time as this friend on a number of occasions over the past few days.

At Donna's request, Edie looks into these apparent coincidences, using a combination of investigative work and conversations with her rabbi (who is tutoring Edie in preparation for her bat mitzvah) about the nature of fatalism and determinism. Meanwhile, Edie's school friend Harry Coranger is suspicious of his stepfather, who has become involved with ultra-radical anti-capitalists who, furious at the state of the planet and its greed-fuelled decline, are plotting an audacious double atrocity: a bombing and a hijacking.

When Harry bizarrely disappears, Edie becomes embroiled in trying to find him and, ultimately, foil the terrorists' plans. Utilising her brave instincts and skills as a supersleuth for hire, Edie sets about resolving and averting the mysteries and crises that she is confronted with as she comes to realise that things often happen outside of chance, and outside of our understanding and control. Outside Chance is the second instalment in Anthony Kessel's four-book Don't Doubt the Rainbow series a new contemporary middle-grade detective series with a difference.

To solve each mystery, 13-year-old Edie Marble must harness the Three Principles, a new approach to understanding how the mind works that is currently proving invaluable in improving mental health and well-being in children internationally. Reading age 11+.