Raven hunched down again and reached into her jacket pocket. She retrieved her phone.

"What are you doing?" Rudi hissed.

"I need to get a picture," she replied, raising herself up once again. She shook her head. This will never work, she thought. There is no way a cell-phone camera will get a picture of an object from across a dark room, both through the window and then through the glass of the cabinet.

She put her phone back in her pocket and started to feel along the bottom of the window, her fingers feeling for what her eyes could not see.

Rudi looked at her in horror.

She raised herself up further and began trying to work the window loose.

"What are you doing?" Rudi hissed.

"Shhhhh!" Raven glared at him. "How else must I get this picture?"

Rudi reached out and grabbed her arm. Raven snatched it back and pushed him.

"This is crazy!" Rudi said, louder now.

"Then go home!" said Raven.

Rudi grabbed her arm again.

"Let me go!" Raven said, louder this time. "Just let me…"

When feisty and impetuous Raven and her younger brother, the more reserved and middle-of-the-road Rudi, arrive in town, it is anything but normal. Going off the deep end is what Raven is about, and when this happens it spells trouble for Rudi. Not wanting to rock the boat, Rudi is often powerless to resist one of Raven's Big Ideas, and they aren't in town long when one starts to take control.

You see, Raven loves life, and she loves new experiences. She is not, though, particularly good at thinking her way through a thing before she jumps right in. And to make matters worse, she has brought along a rather large axe to grind. Raven hasn't been getting along with her father for a while. They've had some words, and even more silences, and Raven has brought along the frustrations, the worries, the anger, and the confusion. Rudi doesn't really know what her mood swings have been about lately, and while he comes across as outgoing and confident - at least on the surface - he is often a bundle of nerves and Raven's angst (as he sees it) isn't helping.

And as they arrive are are thrust into the whirlwind of activity that their stay promises, Rudi has to hold off on figuring her out - for now. Because, as usual, Raven is set to plunge herself into trouble once again. Perhaps to prove something to everyone. And this time, the trouble is more than she expected, and more than Rudi wants to handle.

Cape Town author, Adrian Partridge, brings to life these wonderful characters in the first book of his Rudi and Raven series, The Organ Grinder's Monkey. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, sometimes tragic and sometimes eyebrow raising, it remains real. It is about real people going through real things. It is about you.

As Rudi and Raven tackle situations and events, moments and people, they are forced to peel back the layers of who they are, to clean off the paint left on them by circumstances and expectations and perhaps - just perhaps - they can find out who they are, not as the world sees them, but as they are meant to be.

And Raven, in the process of needing to prove a point to everyone, may yet find that the biggest point she has to prove is to herself.

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