Feather and Bone by Gus Smith Subject: Horror Publisher: Big Engine (UK) Edition Our Price inc. p&p Status first edition trade paperback, 307pp, ISBN 1903468035, 2001 UK only: £11.49 in stock

The gray hills of Northumberland are pervaded by ancient evil and modern sickness in Gus Smith's remarkable novel of occult and psychological horror. A strong sense of place and some fascinatingly complex characters are accompanied by a worldly knowledge of everything from the BSE crisis to the workings of the tabloid press. Convincingly, Smith shows us ultimate evil in conflict with flawed, basically good characters, and makes us believe in both. Roz Kaveney

Isabel doesn't speak to people, but she speaks to animals all the time. She knows what forces are at work on the Northumberland moors but she doesn't understand them. And what can she do? She's only seven.

Alison Rigg, rising star of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, is in Northumberland to investigate reports of BSE where no BSE should be. Now her body has been found lying by a stream. She is still alive, but her soul has fled, no-one knows where.

And a dark force that no-one dares name is on the move, reaching into the lives of this small community and tearing it apart.

Gus Smith's dark fantasy debut mixes the look and feel, the light and air of the Northumberland moors with a force of evil that hits you like a slap in the face. What connects BSE, an electively mute young girl, some 21st-century witches and a shapeless dark force at large in the Border countryside? Gus Smith tells his story with the rhythm and plausibility of a folk tale.

The author
Gus Smith is a very ordinary character – former English teacher, Chairman of the Ecology Building Society, folk musician/songwriter (he has had four full-length musicals performed), smallholding farmer and restorer of old buildings (currently a cottage on the Isle of Arran). He writes for kids as Gus Grenfell and has a fantasy trilogy at present under consideration by a major publisher.