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Table of Contents Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Introduction Chapter 1 - SUNSET TOWERS Chapter 2 - GHOSTS OR WORSE Chapter 3 - TENANTS IN AND OUT Chapter 4 - THE CORPSE FOUND Chapter 5 - SIXTEEN HEIRS Chapter 6 - THE WESTING WILL Chapter 7 - THE WESTING GAME Chapter 8 - THE PAIRED HEIRS Chapter 9 - LOST AND FOUND Chapter 10 - THE LONG PARTY Chapter 11 - THE MEETING Chapter 12 - THE FIRST BOMB Chapter 13 - THE SECOND BOMB Chapter 14 - PAIRS REPAIRED Chapter 15 - FACT AND GOSSIP Chapter 16 - THE THIRD BOMB Chapter 17 - SOME SOLUTIONS Chapter 18 - THE TRACKERS Chapter 19 - ODD RELATIVES Chapter 20 - CONFESSIONS Chapter 21 - THE FOURTH BOMB Chapter 22 - LOSERS, WINNER Chapter 23 - STRANGE ANSWERS Chapter 24 - WRONG ALL WRONG Chapter 25 - WESTING'S WAKE Chapter 26 - TURTLE'S TRIAL Chapter 27 - A HAPPY FOURTH Chapter 28 - AND THEN . . . Chapter 29 - FIVE YEARS PASS Chapter 30 - THE END? Sunset Towers The sun sets in the west (just about everyone knows that), but Sunset Towers faced east. Strange! Sunset Towers faced east and had no towers. This glittery, glassy apartment house stood alone on the Lake Michigan shore five stories high. Five empty stories high. Then one day (it happened to be the Fourth of July), a most uncommon-looking delivery boy rode around town slipping letters under the doors of the chosen tenants-to-be. The letters were signed Barney Northrup . The delivery boy was sixty-two years old, and there was no such person as Barney Northrup. . . . "In [ The Westing Game ] the author shows once more that no one can beat her at intrigue, at concocting marvelous absurdities." -- Publishers Weekly OTHER TITLES AVAILABLE IN PREMIUM EDITIONS: SPEAK Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England First published in the United States of America by E. P. Dutton, a division of Penguin Books USA, Inc., 1978 Published by Puffin Books, 1992 Reissued, 1997 This edition published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2008 Copyright © Ellen Raskin, 1978 ISBN: 9781101157459 ■ FOR JENNY who asked for a puzzle-mystery ■ AND SUSAN K. INTRODUCTION Until 1970, Ellen Raskin was considered an illustrator, not an author, although she had written the texts of her notable picture books, such as Nothing Ever Happens on My Block ; And It Rained ; and Spectacles . And until 1969, I didn't really know her, although when I was the children's-book editor at Holt, Rinehart and Winston, she had illustrated Books: A Book to Begin On, by Susan Bartlett, and Come Along! , by Rebecca Caudill--as well as doing for us some of the one thousand book jackets of which she was so proud. Our friendship really began in the smoking car (like the title character of Moe Q. McGlutch , Ellen smoked too much) of a Pennsylvania Railroad train en route from New York to Philadelphia, where we were both speaking on a panel. I stopped to say hello, and she said, "I'm sitting here alone because I'm so nervous. I hate speaking." "I hate it, too," I said, "and I've given up smoking." In the depressed gloom that followed this exchange, the beginning of a bond was formed. That same year I moved from Holt to E. P. Dutton. Their office was located at Union Square and Seventeenth Street, only a short walk from Ellen's apartment on Eighth Street, and we got together more often. One day, Ellen confided that she had always wanted to adapt Goblin Market, by Christina Rossetti, as a picture-book text. I thought of the lavishly rich visual details of the poem, and I longed to see how she would illustrate it. "Would you do the book for me?" I asked. "Yes," she answered. "Jean [Jean Karl, her editor at Atheneum] doesn't want it." Ellen was always candid. So she did do it--her first book for Dutton. One of her exquisitely intricate paintings for that book now hangs on my wall. We often talked about our lives, and I particularly loved stories about her family and how she and her parents and sister drove around the country during the Great Depression so her father could look for work, an epic safari that took them from Milwaukee to California. "You should write a book about growing up in the Depression," I told her. Excerpted from The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.