ISLE OF 100000 GRAVES HC

Five years ago, little Gwenny's father found, a map inside a bottle with instructions on how to reach the mysterious (and titular) Isle of 100,000 Graves and its legendary treasures - and then he vanished. Now Gwenny, having stumbled across another bottle-shipped map, enlists the dubious help of a shipful of pirates and sets out to find the island and her long-lost dad. Little does she realize that the Isle comes by its ominous name honestly, as the location of a secret school for executioners and torturers, where apple-cheeked youngsters are taught the finer points of extracting information from prisoners... and then putting an end to their lives in a wide variety of gruesome ways. And they've reached the point in their studies where theory should ideally give way to practice, so an influx of uninvited visitors comes as a blessing to the faculty. This story is a comedy, albeit a dark one.