Nobody's Dog

Sully Marsh has one rule about moving: never unpack the box marked MISC. House five, a new town, the same old rule. If you never unpack the things you'd miss, you never have to pack them again. Then, on his first day in Ashby Falls, Sully sees a scruffy stray dog with one white sock trotting down the sidewalk beside a delivery robot. The robot is Nine, a retired Swiftly unit with six wheels, one squeaky, and a faded orange bicycle flag. Swiftly is long gone. Nine still runs its forty-stop route every single day, saying hello at houses that stopped ordering long ago. So Sully follows. The route ends at an abandoned greenhouse at the bottom of Mill Road, and inside, nothing is what it seems. Tolliver, a tall waiter robot from a diner that closed, carries water and crackers on his silver tray and insists your table will be ready shortly. Scoop, a dented city street sweeper, decides what is and isn't trash. Peony, a faded pink nursery robot, sings the only part of a lullaby she can still remember. Nobody wanted them anymore. So they found somebody who needed them: a one-winged pigeon, a three-legged rabbit, a turtle that won't quit, and a whole town's worth of hurt and hungry animals. And the dog has a secret of her own. Sully promises not to tell. But the town has just passed the Clear Streets Act, and on Reclamation Day every unregistered robot will be hauled to the scrapyard. Now Sully, his allergic, vet-in-training neighbor Tamsin, and four robots with nowhere else to go have only a few weeks to keep the greenhouse safe, before the cold sets in and before Sully's mom finds out what he's been hiding. To save his friends, the boy who never stays will have to do the hardest thing he's ever done: decide that this place, and these friends, are worth staying for. Warm, funny, and full of heart, Nobody's Dog is a story about second chances, found family, and the kind of kindness that keeps showing up, one stop at a time. Perfect for readers ages 8 to 12, animal lovers, robot fans, and anyone who has ever been the new kid and wondered where they belong.