‘Gripped me with an icy finger from the very first page’ Catherine Bruton WINNER: East Anglian Book Awards (Best Children’s Book) Fourteen-year-old London schoolboy Charlie has been looking forward to practising his football skills in his local park in the Christmas holidays. Instead he is packed off to the wilds of the East Anglian coast to stay with an uncle he barely knows. It’s going to be a tough week. Uncle Patrick’s ramshackle house doesn’t have wi-fi, and his daughter Ariel, Charlie’s cousin, seems determined to be vile. And who are the mysterious children laughing after dark in the empty bedroom next to Charlie’s? Could the place be haunted? That’s barely the half of it. When Charlie finds an ancient silver box buried on the beach, he unleashes a chilling sequence of events: animals with the life sucked out of them, the house ransacked by a crooked antique dealer, and an even more terrifying visitor from the spirit world. At least it all brings Charlie and Ariel together, as they battle to solve the mystery of the ‘box of souls’ and re-capture the baleful ghostly presence they have released, before anyone gets seriously hurt. ‘A superb debut’ The Tablet ‘I love, love, loved Jim Cockin’s spookily spellbinding Gothic ghost story’ Catherine Bruton ‘This book will have you hooked till the last page’ Kids’ Book Review Podcast ‘This action-packed emotional rollercoaster of an adventure story grabs you from the first page’ Anne-Marie Conway ‘Spine-tinglingly spooky. compelling, chilling read’ Through the Bookshelf ‘Guaranteed to bring shivers of delight and fright to young readers of 9+’ Book Craic ‘A really good read’ Brenner Woolley, BBC Radio Suffolk Paperback: 288pp Published: Lightning (September 2024) ISBN: 9781785633775
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