Book description
A brilliant supernatural thriller with a modern twist, and a triumphant
return from one of Britain's best-loved writers.
At the end of a track, on the outskirts of an ordinary coastal town,
lies a dilapidated house. Once, a group of amateur ghost hunters spent
the night there. Two of them don't like to speak about the experience.
The third can't speak about it. He went into the basement, you see, and
afterwards he screamed so hard and so long he tore his vocal cords.
Now, a group of teenagers have decided to hang out in the old haunted
house. Dismissing the fears of the others, their leader Jezza goes down
into the basement… and comes back up with a children's book, full of
strange and colourful tales of a playing-card world, a fairytale world,
full of Jacks, Queens and Kings, unicorns and wolves.
But the book is no fairytale. Written by Austerly Fellows, a mysterious
turn-of-the-century occultist, it just might be the gateway to something
terrifying…and awfully final. As the children and teenagers of the town
are swept up by its terrible power, swept into its seductive world,
something has begun that could usher in hell on earth. Soon, the only
people standing in its way are a young boy with a sci-fi obsession, and
his dad - an unassuming maths teacher called Martin… Robin Jarvis
started writing and illustrating his own books in 1988 and, with his
acclaimed 'Deptford Mice' and 'Whitby Witches' titles, quickly acquired
a reputation as a bestselling children's author. He has been shortlisted
for the Carnegie Prize and Smarties Award, and twice won the Lancashire
Libraries Children's Book of the Year Award. Amongst children, his work
has a cult following.
Robin Jarvis lives in Greenwich, London.
