The Shadow Collector's Apprentice

Fans of Holly Horvath and Kate DiCamillo will love this warm, eccentric, and enchanting middle-grade novel.
Peculiar things are going on in the town of Medley over the summer of 1963, but it's hard for twelve-year-old Cully Pennyacre to figure out what it all means. His father has disappeared mysteriously, people don't seem like themselves, and his apprenticeship at Batty's Attic antique store gets stranger each day. The owner has a disturbing hobby of collecting people's shadows with a weird projectorlike machine and foul-smelling chemicals. He claims the process is harmless, but it leaves his victims listless and passive. Odd happenings become the norm as Cully, Batty's granddaughter Isabel, and Cully's best friend band together to get to the bottom of a secret black market in human shadows.