The Many Lifetimes of Molly Marmalade: The Lost Silver

By Michael William Ham

In the golden haze of endless summers, an immortal calico cat named Molly-or Marmalade, or Minou, depending on the century-curls in the sunlight of her ninth (or ninety-ninth) life, dreaming of oranges and sticky-fingered boys. Thomas, her latest companion, doesn't know she's cheated death more times than she's knocked over gravy boats. But when a rusted railway token stamped with her pawprint surfaces in his great-grandmother's locket, their quiet Ohio summer unravels into a journey aboard the Marmalade Line: a train that runs on lost silver, jazz clarinets, and the stubborn love of cats who've outlived empires.

From the magnolia-shadowed platforms of Natchez to the attic-trunk secrets of a girl named Evelyn in 1923, Molly leads Thomas through time loops stitched with marmalade labels and spoon-stealing tabbies. But the tracks hum with danger-every stop risks rewriting history, and every passenger carries ghosts. When the conductor's pocket watch ticks backward, Thomas must choose: cling to the life he knows, or follow Molly's crooked pawprints into a past where his great-grandmother's unfinished business waits like a half-dug hole beneath a train depot's roots.

For readers who loved *The Ocean at the End of the Lane* and *The Cats of Tanglewood Forest*, this lyrical tale blends magic realism with the quiet ache of childhood's end-where immortals nap in sunbeams, storms smell of burnt sugar, and the most ordinary boy might hold the ticket to a century's oldest mystery.

*Some trains only run once. Some run every time a cat purrs.*

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GH2FTQFH
• ISBN13: 9798278839460
• Release Date: January 2026
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 95 Pages
• Weight: 0.31 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.2" x 6.0"