When 12-year-old Eleanor Newton dies in an accident, she finds herself journeying down a mysterious river that takes her to The Underworld. She apprehensively embarks on her “afterlife” at Eventide House, a boarding school of sorts for children who have died.

The Underworld is captivating: always sunny and warm but also fractured. Strange things have been happening to Ellie since she arrived: she knows something isn’t right, and she doesn’t want to be there. She desperately wants to get back to the world of The Living to meet her new baby brother, even if it means being a ghost.

Can Ellie find a way out of the Underworld? And who – or what – will she be if she does?

The Lovely Dark is another breathtakingly original story from Matthew Fox, author of The Sky Over Rebecca. Set in the modern world, it features themes of life after a pandemic, mental health and grief, all handled with real lightness of touch.

“Fox is a beguiling writer, whose prose cocoons us through the unusual adventures that follow … [the twist] left this not-so-young reader close to tears” The Telegraph, 5-star review

There was a single trail of footprints, the first I’d seen all morning. They were fresh tracks, I saw, the edges of the impressions in the snow quite hard. Small feet. Like mine. Someone my age.
Then they stopped.

When mysterious footprints appear in the Stockholm snow, ten-year-old Kara must discover where they’ve come from – and who they belong to. They lead Kara to Rebecca, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl, and her younger brother Samuel. Kara realises they are refugees – from another time, World War Two – and are trying to find their way home.

The grief and loneliness that Rebecca and Samuel have endured is something Kara can relate to – feeling like you’re always on the outside looking in – and she finds herself compelled to help them. Through her eyes, we rediscover the magic that lies in the world around us, if only we have the courage to look for it.

Kara is a heroine for modern times: fragile but fierce, in this utterly compelling story from a stellar new voice in children’s literature, Matthew Fox