Stone Book Quartet: From the author of the 2022 Booker Shortlisted Treacle Walker (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)

`These books have far more than a story to offer. The final continuity in the stories, linked as they are by repetition of words and image, of places and people, is the continuity of crafts, practised over generations and leaving their products behind them. The prose is simple, concrete and direct, as clear as notes in music and as definite.' Sunday Times

`The Stone Book Quartet has an artistry that is nothing short of breathtaking, a simplicity that engages everyone who can hear the voices of the characters on the page. The use of metaphor has a diamond-like quality that makes us read his text as an exciting exploration of writing. He binds the reader to him and shows us the author working with language to make his book as his characters worked with iron and stone. Not a word is wasted. The episodes in each book stand out clear against the sky and landscape of Garner's north-east Cheshire.' TLS

Alan Garner is one of Britain's greatest living writers for children, the author of such classics as ELIDOR and THE OWL SERVICE. He has done much to explore the disappearing beliefs and traditions of agricultural England. In 1996 he published an acclaimed and unsettling novel for adults, STRANDLOPER (Harvill).