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The new novel from the much-loved, bestselling author of CHOCOLAT will delight Joanne Harris many fans around the globe. After 30 years at St Oswalds Grammar School, Latin master Roy Straitley has seen all kinds of boys come and go. Each class has its clowns, its rebels, its underdogs. But every so often theres a boy who doesnt fit the mould. A troublemaker. A boy with hidden shadows inside.

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After thirty years at St Oswald´s Grammar in North Yorkshire, Latin master Roy Straitley has seen all kinds of boys come and go. Each class has its clowns, its rebels, its underdogs, its ´Brodie´ boys who, whilst of course he doesn´t have favourites, hold a special place in an old teacher´s heart. But every so often there´s a boy who doesn´t fit the mould. A troublemaker. A boy with hidden shadows inside.

With insolvency and academic failure looming, a new broom has arrived at the venerable school, bringing Powerpoint, sharp suits and even sixth form girls to the dusty corridors. But while Straitley does his sardonic best to resist this march to the future, a shadow from his past is stirring. A boy who even twenty years on haunts his teacher´s dreams. A boy capable of bad things.

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"A magnificently plotted and twisty journey to the heart of a 24-year-old crime...darkly humorous...constantly wrongfoots and misdirects...up to a satisfyingly eccentric conclusion." Observer

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Joanne Harris´s Whitbread-shortlisted Chocolat was made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. She is the author of many other bestselling novels, including Lollipop Shoes and Peaches for Monsieur le Curé, both also featuring Vianne Rocher, as is her new novel The Strawberry Thief. She has also written acclaimed novels in such diverse genres as fantasy based on Norse myth (Runemarks, Runelight, The Gospel of Loki), and the Malbry cycle of dark psychological thrillers (Gentlemen & Players, Blueeyedboy, and Different Class).

Born in Barnsley, of an English father and a French mother, she spent fifteen years as a teacher before (somewhat reluctantly) becoming a full-time writer. In 2013, she was awarded an MBE. She lives in Yorkshire, plays bass and flute in a band first formed when she was sixteen, and works in a shed in her garden.

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