Excerpt from Ruby's Spoon by Anna Lawrence Pietroni, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The stranger said she had to find a cheap room, just for a night or two. Watching her, sat cautious and unsteady on the edge of Captin’s one-armed sofa that sprouted horsehair around the studs and buttons, Ruby could see what had made her afraid of this woman. She was guarded, Ruby thought, as if within she held at bay a secret—jumpy, yappy, like an untrained hound that could leap free and knock the air from Ruby, knock her to the ground. The scarlet cloak, the salt-white hair that settled heavy on her shoulder like a pelt—the hair of an old woman on the head of a young soul, for the woman was still young, and her skin lambent and unlined. And more than this, the strange unbalanced eyes—one dark as coal, the other gauzy, white. Everyone avoids a white, white eye. You can see further with a white eye—see the scabs and pits and scars that mark our hearts. This blind eye it was, catched me out, thought Ruby, but while Captin brought fresh chips out for the stranger, she decided to be civil.

She introduced herself, and the woman said her name was Isa Fly. Pouring tea out in the good cups, Ruby told Miss Fly how the Leopard had a room upstairs as they kept spare so they could rightly call themselves an inn. Captin said he’d see the lady there, but not now when last orders was being rung. Closing time, too rough, too busy—she’d be nudged and elbowed into bruises. “Wait till our chips is done, and then walk yo down, I will.” Chilly Fox, the landlord at the Leopard, never went to bed before the dawn.

Excerpted from Ruby's Spoon by Anna Lawrence Pietroni Copyright © 2010 by Anna Lawrence Pietroni. Excerpted by permission of Spiegel & Grau, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.