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With the speed of the great apes, Tarzan rushed through the jungle toward his home and family. But he was already too late. The marauders had been there before him. His farm was in shambles and no-one was left alive. Silently, he swore his terrible vengeance against those who had done this monstrous deed. The he set out grimly to track them…through warring armies…across a vast desert that no man had ever crossed…and to strange valley where only madmen lived.

A bank holiday – memorable for murder…

‘Few authors are better than Margaret Yorke in generating a real sense of fear’ SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

‘A star in our galaxy of crime writers’ FINANCIAL TIMES

It’s August Bank Holiday, and the great Bramsbourne Fete and Flower Show. But this one is going to be particularly memorable.

Everyone takes part in the preparations, and families gather from far and near. Brigadier and Mrs Trent welcome their daughter Susan, her husband and two children, and their daughter-in-law Elizabeth. Only their son Victor is absent, a sorrow they silently agree not to mention.

Into this carefree scene comes a man on the run. His efforts to evade the tightening police net affect, one after another, everyone in the village. But Brigadier Trent and his wife, and the war-disabled vicar, are more concerned than anyone …

In this new collection taken from her very first short stories, written while she and her young family were living in a bus, shortly after the end of the second world war, up until her most recent, Joan Aiken draws on the characters of women from folk and fairy tales who may have had to keep their own light under a bushel, but who use their understanding of the ways of the world, and often their sense of humour to help not just themselves, but others who are lonely and unhappy.


Often delightfully tongue in cheek, Joan Aiken presents stories of shop girls who can sell you a pinch of weather, or lonely spinster piano teachers who can confront the devil and his pop group in a dark alley. Old ladies, browbeaten wives, silent mothers, unhappy daughters – all are given a chance to speak their thoughts, and even practise a little magic in Joan Aiken’s modern folk tales, particularly in her last collection, called Mooncake. Stories from her whole writing career are included in this collection.