The Girl Who Raced the World

About this book

It is 1872; Maggie’s beloved mother has died, leaving her with nothing but a letter to be delivered to a man named Passepartout whom she has never met. 

After experiencing the appalling oppression of life in the workhouse for a few weeks, Maggie makes her escape and sets off to deliver her mother’s letter. And that’s how she manages to get caught up in the whirlwind of a madcap journey around the world. 

A journey that must be completed within 80 days if her new employer, Mr Phileas Fogg, is to win a bet or lose everything he has.

The journey through Italy, Hong Kong, Japan, America, and India would be enough of a challenge in itself, but with a bank robber on the loose and an irate detective on their tail, Maggie soon discovers there is much more than just a bet at stake. 

In an inspired reimagining of the Jules Verne classic Around the World in Eighty Days, readers are swept across the globe against a backdrop of fearlessness, treachery, sabotage and family secrets.

Maggie is a feisty and relatable character, providing an ingenious and accessible doorway to the world of late Victorian explorers and their heroic exploits.