Books with title The Stone Book Quartet

A classic work of rural magic realism from one of Britain’s greatest children’s novelists.Through four interconnected fables of a way of living in rural England that has now disappeared, Alan Garner vividly brings to life a landscape situated on the outskirts of industrial Manchester.Smiths and chandlers, steeplejacks and quarrymen, labourers and artisans: they all live and work hand in hand with the seasons, the elements and the land. There is a mutual respect and a knowledge of the magical here that has somehow, somewhere been lost to us. These fables beautifully recapture and restore that lost world in simple, searching prose.

The four books which make up this volume were first published individually. "As the stories grow into one story, so one's awareness of the emblems and symbols deepens! Garner binds the reader to him and he shows us the author working with language to make his book as his characters worked with stone and iron. Not a word is wasted." - "Times Literary Supplement". "The Stone Book" - "Expect a lot and you won't be expecting too much of "The Stone Book". It is a miniature masterpiece and, like all great miniatures, is staggering in what its limits contain." - Signal. "Granny Reardun" - "A brief, distinguished, satisfying book." - "The Observer". "The Aimer Gate" - ""The Aimer Gate" and its companion books deserve to last as classics in their kind - compact, concentrated, yet giving that impression of ease and simplicity which is the mark of a craftsman." - "The Sunday Times". "Tom Fobble's Day" - "The writing is marvellously precise, metaphorical and compressed, using each word to do the power of ten." - "The Guardian".

We knew we had to solve the mystery somehow!' The world of Kalu, Malu, Bulu and Tulu is always buzzing with mysteries, big and small. And that works just fine, because the four young 'detectives' are raring to solve them. Wherever the four clever friends happen to be-at their school hostel, next door at the Zamindar Mansion, or away on holiday in Mandu or Cherrapunji-they have a way of smelling out a mystery and keeping their nerve in the face of daunting dangers and terrifying threats to find what lies at the bottom of it. Join the Lu Quartet on their adventures in caves and ravines, secret chambers and dark mango groves, and see if you can unravel the twists and turns of the whodunits just as they do.These thirteen classic stories by Nalini Das originally appeared in the reputed Bengali magazine Sandesh and have been translated for the first time into English by leading children's writer Swapna Dutta.