Terrier

Beka Cooper Series

Author: Tamora Pierce

Book 1 in the Beka Cooper series

Pages: 592

Published: 2006

Age: 12+

Keep out of the way. Obey all orders. Get killed on your own time.

Beka Cooper is one of the newest trainees in the Provost's Guard. As a rookie—known as a Puppy—she's assigned to the realm's toughest district: the Lower City. It should be a death sentence. The Lower City is filled with pickpockets who are fast as lightning, murderers stalking the streets, and rogues who will knock your teeth out with a smile.

But Beka's not your average Puppy. She grew up in the Lower City and knows what makes it tick. It's Beka who notices that there might be something more to the latest crime wave. And it's Beka who must use her street smarts and her own brand of eerie magic to chase down a killer.

Beka is a smart, savvy heroine making a name for herself on the mean streets of Tortall's Lower City.

About the Beka Cooper Series

Books in series order

  1. 1.Terrier(2006)
  2. 2.Bloodhound(2009)
  3. 3.Mastiff(2011)

Reading age: 12+ years

This series should be read in order.

This series is a prequel to Tamora Pierce's first quartet, The Song of the Lioness, and is set in the kingdom of Tortall two hundred years earlier. It details the adventures of Beka Cooper, a sixteen-year-old recruit of the Lord Provost, originally from a lower city family and now in service to the Provost's Guard.

Beka is a rookie with the law-enforcing Provost's Guard, and she's been assigned to the Lower City. It's a tough beat that's about to get tougher, as Beka's limited ability to communicate with the dead clues her in to an underworld conspiracy. Someone close to Beka is using dark magic to profit from the Lower City's criminal enterprises—and the result is a crime wave the likes of which the Provost's Guard has never seen before.