Showing results by author "Robert Westall" in All Categories

Geoff Ashden is a regular guy trying to make an honest living as an antique dealer, but who has an uncanny knack for finding cursed objects and haunted places: a sinister Georgian clock carved with obscene and satanic designs, a hideous doll with deadly powers, a pair of old spectacles that let their wearer see a little too clearly, an ugly house with a terrifying secret, a church full of graffiti scrawled in decomposing human flesh.

The air raid siren that pierces the English night sky comes as no surprise to young Harry Baguely. Ever since Hitler began sending his warplanes to raid London, Harry has become an old hand at running to his family’s bomb shelter and waiting for the attacks to end. This time, though, Harry’s family doesn’t make it to the shelter. A war orphan with nowhere to go and only a lonely dog for a friend, Harry decides to make a courageous journey up the English coast. He is looking for a place to call home....

Who is writing the messages in the dust? What is the story behind the huge skull in the old Watch House? Alone and unhappy in Garmouth, Anne knows the shadows are following her. Spirits of long-dead sailors who won't rest. And from behind its empty windows, the Watch House is watching her. The Watch House is the first ghostly story for young audiences written by noted author Robert Westall. Originally published in 1977, it was adapted for television by the BBC in 1988. This brand-new audiobook edition marks the first time the classic spooky story has been performed in audio.

‘Until last year we would have called ourselves an ordinary English family. I mean, you may think that Figgis was pretty odd – the way he could get so upset about an injured squirrel or an Ethiopian mother and child or be so knowledgeable about the South Seas where he’d never been. But everything was fine...’And then things became more serious. It was as if Figgis had become another boy, a boy in the Gulf.

Steeplejack Joe Clark climbed his first factory chimney when he was four years old. Steeplejacking had been in his family for five generations. Not much frightened him. Certainly not stone. So when Joe is offered the lucrative job of repairing the weathercock and stonework on one of Muncaster Cathedral’s spires, he can’t believe his good fortune. But from the moment he saw the medieval gargoyle - lichen colored and hollowed-eyed - he felt uneasy, as if he were being watched. But he wasn’t going to let a few superstitious fears get in the way of his job.

Mel the cat had always wanted to fly, and Geoff the cat had always wanted to understand how the universe worked. Their wishes are both granted one evening when two space creatures, Grok and Klek, make an unauthorised visit to Planet Earth. But achieving their dream only opens the cats’ eyes to the real world. They see the pollution, the poison and the cruelty of the men who seem to run things. Mel and Geoff think they can make things better.

And suddenly I stood up because I knew what it was. It was a model galleon, buried in the sand... My heart was in my mouth. I just knew that no matter if I lived to be a hundred I would never find anything so wonderful again.’ With growing excitement, Tim and his Uncle Geoff realize the significance of their discovery. For the model ship yields up a secret that sets them on a journey into the past, to solve a mystery and salvage a story of danger and romance buried in the sands.

‘The sky split open. A sky of brilliant yellow light; a world of noise that filled his ears like sand at the seaside, so that afterwards there was only total silence’. But silence brings terror and grief to Sonny’s family as they come to terms with the loss of his mother in a German bombing raid. In a fit of anguish and grief, his father joins the RAF to avenge her death, and Sonny is left alone. As he fights for survival, Sonny embarks on his own dramatic and intensely personal confrontation with the enemy….