We asked many questions, visited many museums in the city, and set off a number of alarms - by mistake, of course. One year my class and I decided to figure out what art was about. I began teaching 3rd grade at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. When our kids started school, we moved to Chicago. My husband and I met and were married on Nantucket, lived there year-round for another 10 years, and had our two children there. I surprised myself by writing two books of ghost stories, stories collected by interviewing people. The Met has five Vermeer paintings and the Frick three, so Vermeer and I have been friends for many years.Īfter studying art history in college, I moved to Nantucket Island, in Massachusetts, in order to write. By the time I was a teenager, I sometimes stopped at the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Frick Museum after school, just to wander and look and think.

She writes in the laundry room of her home in Chicago, Illinois, and you can find her online at was born in New York City and grew up playing in Central Park, getting my share of scraped knees, and riding many public buses and subways. Out of the Wild Night is master storyteller Blue Balliett at her spooky best, a spellbinding tale about the haunted residents of a very special place.īlue Balliett is the author of several bestselling, acclaimed mystery novels, including Hold Fast, Chasing Vermeer (a Book Sense Book of the Year and an Edgar Award winner), The Wright 3, The Calder Game, and The Danger Box. People tend to get trapped - especially if they're up to no good. Things tend to disappear when ghosts are around. But the kids can't be sure how the ghosts are going to act. The ghosts have chosen a few local kids to save the island against the adults who would do it harm. And, even more, they want to protect what was once theirs.

You can hear them in the wind and in the creaks of the old homes. Ghosts are alive on the island of Nantucket. Blue will discuss all things writing, her books, and best of all, ghosts in her presentation followed by a book signing. Nantucket is full of ghosts, and they are determined to help the present and protect the island for the future with the help of the local kids. and the ghosts who must help with the present. Master storyteller Blue Balliett, the New York Times bestselling author of Chasing Vermeer, will be at An Unlikely Story to introduce her new middle grade novel, Out of the WIld Night, an unforgettable story about an island haunted by the past.

Out of the wild night by blue balliett