Haunted

Susan Cooper was born in Buckinghamshire, read English at Oxford and began her career as a reporter and feature-writer for the Sunday Times. She then married an American and moved to the United States. Her sequence of fantasy novels for young adults, The Dark Is Rising, has won numerous international awards, including the Newbery Medal, and has been translated into eleven languages. She has written a number of other books for children and adults, a Broadway play, and several films for television and the cinema. She has two children and lives in Fairfield, Connecticut. Susan is married to the Canadian actor Hume Cronyn.

Joseph Delaney used to be an English teacher, before becoming the best-selling author of the Spook's series, which has been published in 30 countries and sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide. The first book, The Spook's Apprentice, was adapted into a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore.

Berlie Doherty began writing for children in 1983, after teaching and working in radio. She has written more than 35 books for children, as well as for the theatre, radio and television. Berlie has won the Carnegie Medal twice: in 1987 for GRANNY WAS A BUFFER GIRL and in 1992 for DEAR NOBODY. She has also won the Writer's Guild Children's Fiction Award for DAUGHTER OF THE SEA. Her work is published all over the world, and many of her books have been televised.

Jamila’s first book, The Magic Orange Tree, was published in 1979 and she has since been writing steadily, producing critically acclaimed novels and collections of short stories.

Matt Haig is a British author for children and adults. His memoir Reasons to Stay Alive was a number one bestseller, staying in the British top ten for 46 weeks. His children's novels have won the Smarties Gold Medal, the Blue Peter Book of the Year, been shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's Book Prize and nominated for the Carnegie Medal three times.

His books have received praise from Neil Gaiman, Stephen Fry, Jeanette Winterson, Joanne Harris, Patrick Ness, Ian Rankin and SJ Watson, among others. The Guardian summed up his writing as 'funny, clever and quite, quite lovely' by The Times and the New York Times called him 'a writer of great talent'.

Eleanor Updale has been writing books since the turn of the century. Before that she worked in radio and television: mainly on news programmes including The World at One and Newsnight. Eleanor's 'Montmorency' series has won awards on both sides of the Atlantic, and Johnny Swanson was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal, shortlisted for the UKLA Book Awards and won the Fantastic Book Award.

You can find out more at www.eleanorupdale.com