Books with author Robert Westall

"I dreamt I was standing in the dark, looking up at the south-west tower ... And our Kev was up there on top, in the dark, and screaming as if some wild beast was eating him."When steeplejack Joe Clarke is hired to repair the stonework at Muncaster Cathedral, he is unprepared for the horror he will encounter. Something unspeakably evil in the medieval tower is seeking victims among the young neighborhood boys ... and Joe's son may be next! An unsettling story with a horrifying conclusion, this eerie tale will chill young and old readers alike. Robert Westall (1929-1993) is one of the best modern writers of ghost stories in the tradition of the great M.R. James, and The Stones of Muncaster Cathedral, which won the Dracula Society's Children of the Night Award, is one of his finest. This volume also includes a second ghostly tale, 'Brangwyn Gardens', published here for the first time in the United States, and a new introduction by Orrin Grey. 'So vivid and deft in its mental touches and physical details that it had me sweating with vertigo as well as superstitious terror ... No punches are pulled.' - Daily Telegraph 'Chilly, concise and utterly spooky ... among the late British author's best works ... The tower's secret is indeed a whopper, fittingly capping the unrelenting suspense that precedes its revelation.' - Publishers Weekly 'A taut thriller, with a horrifically dramatic denouement.' - Kirkus Reviews 'This is a chilling tale spun by a master storyteller ... The suspense is gradually unleashed as more and more details are discovered and the ending is both explosive and gratifying ... will leave you with a chill down your spine.' - SFSite.com

Robert Westall's very special and gripping first novel for children, winner of the Carnegie Medal. Some bright kid's got a gun and 2000 rounds of live ammo. And that gun's no peashooter. It'll go through a brick wall at a quarter of a mile.' Chas McGill has the second-best collection of war souvenirs in Garmouth, and he desperately wants it to be the best. When he stumbles across the remains of a German bomber crashed in the woods - its shiny, black machine-gun still intact - he grabs his chance. Soon he's masterminding his own war effort with dangerous and unexpected results.... '.... not just the best book so far written for children about the Second World War, but also a metaphor for now.' Aidan Chambers, Times Literary Supplement

Relaunch of spectacular Robert Westall fantasy novel that was way ahead of its time. A fantasy of the near future in which Britain is divided into Zones and castes to which men and women are pitilessly allocated at the end of their schooling. Whether crazed proles in the Unnem zones, smug pampered bourgeois Ests or arrogant Techs, all are ultimately pawns of the computer that governs it all. One boy penetrates the conspiracy by which the nation is governed and has the knowhow to strike at the heart of evil. This novel was originally published in 1983 and was runner up for the Carnegie Medal. It's a fantastic, if bleak, vision of the future -- all the more scary because many of its 'Big Brother' elements are so evident in our society today.