Books in Scar Gatherer series

What can you do when your closest friend lives hundreds of years away?Joe Hopkins is staying in York for October half-term. He hasn't seen Lucy since the beginning of September and he's really missing her. But when at last he slips through time again, he's alarmed to find himself in a different world altogether. This isn't Roman Britain. It's Jorvik, in the age of the Vikings.Joe is relieved to discover that Lucy is here, but dismayed that his former enemy seems to be in this new world too. Can Joe protect Lucy from harm this time, and stop the prophecy of the unicorn's horn from coming true?

Have you ever wondered what it might be like to travel back in time?Joe Hopkins isn't expecting to go anywhere. It's the first day of the summer holidays and he's fed up. His dad has moved out, and he doesn't know what he's going to do with himself for the next six weeks.But while visiting Fishbourne Roman Palace, he slips through time by mistake and finds himself in a world where nothing is quite as he expects. He meets Lucy, the duaghter of the most important man in Britannia, who soon becomes his friend and protector. But as he quickly discovers, there is someone else who wants to get rid of him at any cost. Can Joe survive in Lucy's world for long enough to outwit his enemy and save his new friend from a terrible fate?"The Leopard in the Golden Cage" is the first book in The Scar Gatherer Series, seven adventures for 8 to 12 year olds which will bring Joe face to face with Vikings, smugglers, and the bombers of the Second World War Blitz.

What if freedom wasn't something you could take for granted? What if you had to fight for it?If there's one thing Joe Hopkins knows better than anyone, it's that the past can be very uncomfortable. But life in wealthy Georgian Bristol seems surprisingly civilized. Lucy's house is light and airy, and there are sandwiches and tea with sugar.He soon discovers, however, that this civility is only skin deep: Lucy's family is shockingly involved in slavery.When he meets the African slaves her father has brought back from Jamaica, Joe swiftly finds there are other people in the house who are determined to see them gone, and to profit from their disappearance.Can Joe and Lucy save the slaves from the horrifying fate that threatens them? And can Joe make Lucy see that freedom is what matters most?

Can the latest Victorian invention give Joe what he really wants?When Joe Hopkins boards a ferry to go on holiday, he doesn't expect to find himself shipwrecked. But by the time he washes up on a Cornish beach, he knows he has slipped into the past again.Victorian England is quite different to how he imagined: few of the great inventions of the age have reached the fishing village where Lucy lives. But when Joe has the chance to try out the latest technology - photography - he jumps at it.Can it give him the thing he has desired for so long, a picture of his dearest friend that he can keep? And will the camera prove once and for all that he was there beside her?

The key that unlocks Lucy's world has a dangerous power.It's Easter Saturday, and Joe Hopkins is out riding with his brother. When his horse throws him off, he lands, quite literally, in Tudor England. Joe has learned about the Tudors at school. But if he thinks that will help him, he soon discovers that he knows both too little and too much. He doesn't realise that by giving Lucy his St. Christopher, he is putting her in danger. And when it is taken from her, he faces even greater peril to get it back."The Falconer's Quarry" is the third book in The Scar Gatherer series. The first two books are "The Leopard in the Golden Cage", and "Saving the Unicorn's Horn".

If you know how the Great Fire of London starts, you can stop it from happening ... can't you?Joe Hopkins has been visiting the Tower of London when he slips through time. He finds himself in a city which is dirty, dark and chaotic. Relieved to be welcomed once more into Lucy's home, he is horrified to find the Great Plague has killed half her family. Worse still, another great danger looms, a danger only Joe can see. With his knowledge of the Great Fire of London, he knows he must try and stop it from happening. But before he can, he stumbles across another plot more deadly to England than the fire itself.

November 1940: could German bombers put a stop to Joe's time travelling for good? Bombs have been raining down on Liverpool when Joe Hopkins falls out of the football match he's watching. He finds himself in World War Two, in a city under siege from the skies: the planes of the Luftwaffe are on a mission to bring terror and destruction to one of England's most strategically significant ports. Lucy and her family are bearing up through the air raids, but it's not long before she and Joe discover that not everyone around them is on the same side of this war.As one familiar face after another reappears from Lucy's many pasts, Joe begins to fear, too, that this is the curtain call. Will an air raid put a stop to his time travels? Worse still, will the lethal force of the Luftwaffe be the end of Lucy herself?