Inchworm (26 page)

The first book in The Gussie Series,
The Burying Beetle
was shorlisted for the Brandford Boase Award and was selected for the WHSmith New Talent Initiative.

It was after I ate King that everything started to go wrong in our entire family, as if someone had put an evil spell onto us, a hex - like a bad fairy godmother had said at my birth, when you are eleven you are going to be struck by a sorrow so big it will be like a lightning bolt. There will be grief like a sharp rock in your throat. Twelve-year-old Gussie was born with a rare, life-threatening heart disease, but it hasn't hampered her curiosity. When she reads about the Burying Beetle, which has the unusual habit of burying dead birds, mice, and other small animals by digging away the earth beneath them, it becomes her mission to find one. As she searches the Cornish coast for the elusive insect, Gussie learns be like the Burying Beetle, to bury things past and to live.

The Burying Beetle
is available from Luath Press, as an eBook, and from all good bookshops. Visit
http://www.luath.co.uk/the-burying-beetle.html
for more information.

The Bower Bird won the 2007 Costa Children's Award and the UK literacy Association Book Award. The Bower Bird also won the 2008 Cornish Literary Guild's Literary Salver.

Gussie is twelve years old, loves animals and wants to be a photographer when she grows up. The only problem is that she's unlikely to ever grown up.

'I had open heart surgery last year, when I was eleven, and the healing process hasn't finished yet. I now have an amazing scar that cuts me in half almost, as if I have survived a shark attack'.

Gussie needs a heart and lung transplant, but the donor list is as long as her arm and she can't wait around that long. Gussie has things to do; finding her ancestors, coping with her parents' divorce, and keeping an eye out for the wildlife in her garden.

REVIEWS:

'Brilliant'
THE MAIL ON SUNDAY

'I'm pleased to be able to announce that Gussie has lived to see another day with Kelley capturing so beautifully Gussie's optimism and hope.'
SUE BAKER'S PERSONAL CHOICE, PUBLISHING NEWS

'The world of life and death, beauty and truth seen through the eyes of a 12 year old girl. A rare and beautiful book of lasting quality - we felt this is a voice that needs to be heard and read.'
COSTA AWARD JUDGES

'It's a lovely book - lyrical, funny, full of wisdom. Gussie is such a dear - such a delight and a wonderful character, bright and sharp and strong, never to be pitied for an instant.'
HELEN DUNMORE, author of 'Ingo'

The Bower Bird is available from Luath Press, as an eBook, and from all good bookshops. Visit
http://www.luath.co.uk/the-bower-bird.html
for more information.

France has Montmartre, Prague has Mala Strana and England has St Ives, an enclave where artists can create freely and showcase their works to the world. Costa winner award Ann Kelley has already proved to be an excellent photographer with her previous books Sea Front: A Cornish Souvenir and Paper Whites: Photographs and Poems. Ann Kelley expresses herself in photographs as if they were words. Her style is simple but special, careful and delicate and her photographs genuinely capture the atmosphere of this beautiful Cornish town.

The Light at St Ives
is available from Luath Press and from all good bookshops. Visit
http://www.luath.co.uk/the-light-at-st-ives.html
for more information.

Luath
Press Limited

committed to publishing well written books worth reading

LUATH PRESS takes its name from Robert Burns, whose little collie Luath (Gael., swift or nimble) tripped up Jean Armour at a wedding and gave him the chance to speak to the woman who was to be his wife and the abiding love of his life. Burns called one of ‘The Twa Dogs’ Luath after Cuchullin’s hunting dog in Ossian’s Fingal. Luath Press was established in 1981 in the heart of Burns country, and is now based a few steps up the road from Burns’ first lodgings on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile.

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