In the shadows of Walton Hall a demon lurks... His name: Mephistopheles. In 1586, young John Striven struck a bargain with him in return for help against his murderous foster brother.
11 year-old Eleanor has been sent away to a spooky old school run by a great-aunt she’s never met. Shunned by the other girls, dismayed by Great-Aunt Margaret’s coldness, Eleanor struggles with loneliness; so when a strange, skinny little boy, all flapping arms and nodding head, greets her as a long-lost friend, it feels great to have an ally, however quirky his behaviour. As Davey follows her around, begging her to play games and climb the lime tree ‘like they used to,’ Eleanor is baffled; then bewilderment turns to horror when she realises the boy knows things about her he can’t possibly know, things no one should know... Susanna, her one friend, helps her face the truth. Unravelling the mystery draws Eleanor into a dark web of family history, awakening a tragic past that soon threatens to engulf her.
Twelve year-old Ante (Antonia) Alganesh has a problem. It’s lunchbreak and Florence’s gang are after her. Desperate for a place to hide, she climbs the forbidden staircase to the old organ loft, where a hundred years ago a boy tumbled to his death. No one will think of looking for her there... Except Florence. Petrified, Ante watches her enemy approach, leaning on the rotten hand-rail. She shouts a warning, but it’s too late. There’s a crash – and a boy appears from nowhere, just as a door opens in the wall behind them. All three find themselves in a tunnel leading to a river bank where people queue to be rowed across by a filthy old ferryman…Forced to bury their differences, Ante and Florence accompany the strange boy, Gil, on a journey he should have taken 100 years ago through the Underworld. Making their way past the Shopping Maul and Multivice Complex, attacked by Cerberus, Harpies, Furies and the Minotaur, all this is bad enough: far worse is the doubt gnawing at Ante’s heart...Ante’s Inferno is a gripping combination of fantasy, Greek mythology and adventure, for children aged 9-12 years old. Author Griselda is inspired by C. S. Lewis and Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth. Ante's Inferno won the Children's award in the People's Book Prize 2013, and the Silver award in the 9-12 year-old category of the Wishing Shelf Independent Book Awards 2012.
Johannes Trithemius is best known for his steganographia, but his less notorious works are no less interesting. Here, in de septem secundeis, we have a fusion of history and occultism, regarding celestial and angelic categorizations, used to predict the future as well as correspond past events to the different characteristics of the secondary causes- the seven angels with their seven planets. Trithemius, in his age, thus delivered this knowledge to then-emperor Maximilian of the Holy Roman Empire, and this same system can be expanded infinitely into the past or future.
With a new afterword. 'The best book on teachers and children and writing that I've ever read. No-one has said better so much of what so badly needs saying' - Philip Pullman Kate Clanchy wants to change the world and thinks school is an excellent place to do it. She invites you to meet some of the kids she has taught in her thirty-year career. Join her as she explains everything about sex to a classroom of thirteen-year-olds. As she works in the school 'Inclusion Unit', trying to improve the fortunes of kids excluded from regular lessons because of their terrifying power to end learning in an instant. Or as she nurtures her multicultural poetry group, full of migrants and refugees, watches them find their voice and produce work of heartbreaking brilliance. While Clanchy doesn't deny stinging humiliations or hide painful accidents, she celebrates this most creative, passionate and practically useful of jobs. Teaching today is all too often demeaned, diminished and drastically under-resourced. Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me will show you why it shouldn't be. Winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Writing 2020