The Complete Bostock and Harris

Book excerpt: A New York Review Children's Collection Original The Complete Bostock and Harris combines two delightful, suspenseful, and madly funny tales about two boys in eighteenth-century England, clever and mischievous Harris and sweet but not-so-bright Bostock, who in spite of their differences are the best of friends. In “The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris,” the wily pair put their classical education to the test when they adopt the Spartan custom of exposing infants to the wild, leaving Harris’s infant sister, Adelaide, to the elements. The boys imagine a wolf will come to nourish her, but their plan backfires. It is springtime in “The Night of the Comet,” and in the days before Pigott’s comet will pass over their town, Harris’s and Bostock’s thoughts turn to love: Bostock swoons over Harris’s sister Mary; Harris longs for Captain Bostock’s telescope. The boys strike a deal: Bostock will make off with the telescope in exchange for Harris’s “expert” wooing advice. Unfortunately, that expertise is not quite what Bostock would have hoped.