One Thousand-and-One Arabian Nights by Geraldine McCaughrean

A completely original version of the Arabian Nights Stories by award-winning author Geraldine McCaughrean.

In order to delay her inevitable execution, Queen Shaharazad tells her murdering husband, King Shahryar, a wonderfully exciting story every night. The King is used to a new wife every day, only to put her to death the following day, but finds himself so intrigued in the magical stories Shaharazad tells, he can't bring himself to kill her.

Night after night she tells her wonderful stories until the King starts to relaise that he won't be able to live without them...

About the Author

It's 30 years now since I first got published, and 50 since I found out how writing let me step outside my little, everyday world and go wherever I chose - way back in Time, to far distant shores, towards my own, home-made happy ending. Not that all my books are an easy ride. I write adventure, first and foremost, because that's what I enjoyed reading as a child. But since I have published over 150 books now, there are all manner of books in among that number - gorgeously illustrated picture books, easy readers, prize winners, teenage books and five adult novels.

The White Darkness won the Prinz Award in the USA, which, for as Englishwoman, was the most amazing, startling thrill.

Then there was Peter Pan in Scarlet - official sequel to J M Barrie's Peter Pan, written on behalf of Great Ormond Street Hopsital for Sick Children. I won the chance to write that in a worldwide competition, and because Peter Pan is loved everywhere, my book sold worldwide too. I can't say I expected that when, as a child, I dreamed of being like my older brother and getting a book published one day. These days I have a husband (good at continuity and spelling) and a daughter who is an excellent editor. But she's at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art now, studying to become an actor. So, naturally, I have turned my hand to writing plays. (So many actors, so few plays!)

My Mum told me, "Never boil your cabbages twice, dear," which was her way of saying, "Don't repeat yourself." So I have tried never to write the same book twice. You'll find all my novels quite different from one another. The only way you can find out which ones you like and which you don't is to read them, I'm afraid.

I have also done lots of retellings of myth, legend, folk and fairy tales, and adapted indigestible classics such as El Cid, the Epic of Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, Moby Dick, Shakespeare and the Pilgrim's Progress.
Something for everyone, you see, my dear young, not-so-young, eccentric, middle-of-the-road, poetical, sad, cheerful, timid or reckless reader.

All they have in common is that they all contain words. If you are allergic to words, you'd best not open the covers.

Geraldine McCaughrean has written 160 books and plays for both adults and children, including Peter Pan in Scarlet, one of the most talked about and successful children's titles of 2006. Geraldine McCaughrean has won the Carnegie Medal, the Whitbread Children's Book Award (three times), the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, the Smarties Bronze Award (four times), the Blue Peter Book of the Year award and the Blue Peter Special Book to Keep Forever award.