'Thick brown bodies, some as large as a foot, slithered like fish beneath the surface of a muddy pond...'

Sarah McGraw lives with her father and younger brother on the edge of town, beside a huge garbage dump that her father helps manage. But it's growing out of control. As the piles of refuse grow, so do the rats that frequent the dump. But not only are they growing - they're mutating ...

Turning against humans, they begin to venture outside of the dump, invading the neighbouring houses through the drains, up into toilets and jacuzzis, harassing the neighbourhood and massing for violent and often fatal attacks on the inhabitants. When one of the dump workers is eaten alive by rats, Sarah's dad is called in to work urgently to try and control the crisis - leaving Sarah and her little brother alone - and at the mercy of the rats ...

This is volume 2 in Rats .

There are 224 pages in this book. This book was published 2011 by Hachette Children's Group .

Paul Zindel was born on Staten Island, New York, where he spent ten years working as a chemistry teacher before becoming a writer. His first book, The Pigman , was published in 1969 to massive acclaim. He has since written over a dozen more novels and established himself as one of the strongest writers in his field. In 1971 he won the Pulitzer Prize for drama for The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds and published an autobiographical account of his formative years, The Pigman and Me . Paul Zindel lived in Montague, New Jersey until his death in 2003 at the age of 66.