Glenn Jackson is thirteen and has moved with his father from Burnley to Torbeck in the Lake District. His Mum has not come with them and Glenn's father is avoiding Glenn's questions. From the moment Glenn meets Laura, quiet and overshadowed by her vindictive adoptive sister, he is bewitched. Harlequin is a seven-foot eighteen-year-old living rough in an abandoned shack, disguising himself behind clown's make-up and an old felt hat and hiding in terror whenever the fighter jets have practice runs over Torbeck. When Harlequin rescues Glenn from falling into the old slate mine the two form an...

Fifteen-year-old Samson Ashburner has always felt like an outsider - even before the accident that left his face scarred and his confidence shattered. With the jeers and taunts of the local children and his mother ringing in his ears, Samson malingers like a dark cloud over the Cumbrian landscape. His only refuge is his ancestor's charcoal-burning hut deep in the nearby woods and it is here that he encounters Angel Obscura, a gypsy girl who teachers Samson that not everybody takes him at face value. But Angel is not all that she seems, and Samson is drawn into a web of deceit and shady...