Darkside - Softcover

Since TOM BECKER learned to hold a pen, he wanted to become a writer. Tom studied history at Oxford
University and was inspired by the otherworldly atmosphere of this academic institution. He is also the author
of the next two books in the Darkside series, Lifeblood and Nighttrap. His first book, Darkside, was awarded
the 2007 Waterstone's Children's Book Prize, which celebrates new talent. He lives in the United Kingdom.

Fourteen-year-old Jonathan Sterling's secretive father lies in a hospital, mad and sick. This sets Jonathan, a truant student, on a mission to discover his father's hidden past. References to "the darkness" lead him to a library, where he meets Mary Anne, who has white skin, purple hair, and sedating perfume. She promises to lead him to Darkside, a hidden world beneath London. Colin Moody is chillingly convincing in this portrayal, and his narration becomes mysterious and forbidding as we follow Jonathan underground. Moody highlights Jonathan's desperation to understand, and then escape, the treacherous nineteenth-century world he finds there, which is peopled with vampires and ghouls. Particularly strong is Moody's growling depiction of a P.I. "wereman" who nearly eats Jonathan before becoming his friend. S.W. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine