Small Spaces

Don't panic. That's the first rule of survival. Never panic. Simple enough until your school trip turns into a waking nightmare.After rescuing a book from the river, eleven-year-old Ollie discovers an unsettling ghost story about the sinister Smiling Man, a fiendish trickster who ll grant any wish for a price. Creepy, but it s just a story But when Ollie finds graves bearing the characters names on a school trip to a farm, that story begins to feel terrifyingly real. And then the bus breaks down on the way home. And darkness starts to fall. And the scarecrows are watching. But it s the bus driver who sends Ollie and her friends, Coco and Brian, scrambling into the woods: Best get moving, he said, ominously. At nightfall they ll come for the rest of you. As they work to unravel a hundred-year-old mystery and save their classmates from the Smiling Man, they ll need quick thinking and even quicker feet if they re going to survive.Full of slow-burning tension, gorgeously atmospheric writing and fantastically realised characters, this is quality-commercial fiction at its best: brilliant storytelling that feels accessible both in execution and packaging.