My Swordhand is Singing by Marcus Sedgwick

Winner of the Booktrust Teenage Prize

'A bloodthirsty tale which grips readers from the off.' WATERSTONE'S BOOKS QUARTERLY

'Marcus Sedgwick paints a chilling and irresistibly Gothic picture of the fight between good against evil. This book is tense, unnerving and well-structured - it scared me right to the end and I could not put it down.'  Anna Hickling, The Times

'He came to the gate of the graveyard. There could be no doubt. The wool ran over the fence next to the gate, as if his quarry had sailed clean over it. Dumbly, he gripped it, as if it were a lifeline, when in reality it was leading him towards death itself...' 

In the bitter cold of an unrelenting winter Tomas and his son, Peter, arrive in Chust and despite the inhospitability of the villagers settle there as woodcutters.

Tomas digs a channel of fast-flowing waters around their hut so they have their own little island kingdom. Peter doesn't understand why his father has done this, nor why his father carries a long battered box everywhere they go, and why he is forbidden to know its contents. But when a band of gypsies comes to the village Peter's drab existence is turned upside down.

He is infatuated by the beautiful gypsy princess, Sofia, intoxicated by their love of life and drawn into their deadly quest. For these travellers are Vampire Slayers and Chust is a dying community - where the dead come back to wreak revenge on the living.

Amidst the terrifying events that follow, Peter is stunned to see his father change from a disillusioned man to the warrior hero he once was.

Set in the remote and forbidding landscapes of the seventeenth century this is a heart-rending story of loss and redemption, and inspired by the original vampire folklore of Eastern Europe it represents a unique regeneration of a timeless myth.

Marcus Sedgwick is a successful children's author. When he was young he was told he wouldn't be able to make a living as an author, and that left an impression on him, so much so that he did maths and politics at university. But then he got a job in a children's bookshop, "fell in love with contemporary children's writing" and remembered his childhood aspirations to become a writer. He decided to give it a try.



About the Author

Since Floodland won the Brandford-Boase Award for the best first children's novel of 2000, Marcus Sedgwick's books have been shortlisted for many awards, including The Guardian Children's Fiction Award, The Blue Peter Book Award, the Carnegie Medal and the Edgar Allan Poe Award. About My Swordhand is Singing he says: "It was fascinating to discover the original folklore that gave birth to the vampire legend. No snowy graveyard is left unvisited, no corpse undisturbed, no spell unspoken, no date with destiny unmet. But it's not all gloom; there's misery and horror, too."

By day he works in children's publishing and by night is the drummer in a rock band in Brighton. He lives in Sussex with his wife Pippa, and has a daughter, Alice.

Click here to visit Marcus Sedgewick's own website...