Peter Dickinson Books In Order

The Weathermonger

Long awaited new editions of Peter Dickinson’s cult classics England in the future but an England that is less rather than more civilised. This is the time of The Changes a time when people, especially adults, have grown to hate machines and returned to a more primitive lifestyle. It is a time of hardship and fear! When 16 year old Geoffrey, a ‘weathermonger’ starts to repair his uncle’s motorboat, he and his sister Sally are condemned as witches. Fleeing for their lives, they travel to France where they discover that everything is normal. Returning to England, they set out to discover why the country is under this mysterious spell. Only discovering the origin of the deadly magic will allow them to set the people free of its destructive influence. Peter Dickinson began writing the books after he’d had a nightmare. The trilogy is not sequential; rather, each book explores a different aspect of England during the time that simply became known as The Changes.

Skin Deep

Felony & Mayhem’s British category mystery

A Pride of Heroes

Americans may have Colonial Williamsburg, but for the Brits, there’s ‘Old England,’ an elaborate theme park that pays homage to a similarly imaginary glorious past. At Old England, the woods are lush with game birds, servants know their place, and round every corner is a pink cheeked, mob capped maid, bobbing a curtsey and trilling ‘lawk a mussy!’ in a rustic brogue. It’s no wonder the tourists are happy to buy tickets to a yesterday that never was. Lately, though, there’s been a fly in the Old England ointment. The two doddering old war heroes who own the estate seem to have slipped from charmingly eccentric to disturbingly nuts, and one of the ‘servants’ has committed suicide. Dispatched to investigate the death, Inspector Jimmy Pibble is half hypnotized by Old England’s allure, but when he forces himself to poke beneath the daydream, what he finds is not exactly a green and pleasant land.

Sleep and His Brother

Take one grand house, stuff it with staff, and make it home to several generations. If they send their sons to Oxford and occasionally knock each other off, you’ve got a country-house murder mystery, the delight of classic English crime fiction. But if the boys are instead at Yale, odds are that you’re reading its American counterpart, the New York mansion mystery–a genre largely invented and perfected by Elizabeth Daly. Daly does take Henry Gamadge, her gentleman-sleuth, on the occasional jaunt to the country, but in Arrow Pointing Nowhere they’re both back on the Upper East Side, where Gamadge has been receiving missives suggesting that all is not right at the elegant Fenway mansion. He will ultimately, of course, unravel the mystery, but even more delightful than the solution is the peek at what the New York Times called New York at its most charming.

King and Joker

The monarchy is not what it used to be. King Victor II may be the great great grandson of Queen Victoria, but political and economic realities have intruded even on Buckingham Palace, where family breakfasts center on proposals for tightening the household budget no, Princess Louise will not be hiring out as a babysitter and the King a licensed physician fumes at Parliament’s refusal to permit him to practice medicine, for fear of lawsuits. Nor has royal dignity been spared. A practical joker has invaded the palace, but his tricks, initially amusing, have turned deadly, and seem increasingly to be focused on the teenage Princess Louise. The trickster, it seems clear, wants her to divulge some secret to the Greater British Public, but which one? With a royal family s worth of skeletons in the closet, there are too many to choose from.

Mana’s Story

In search of a new home, The Kin manage to cross a treacherous marsh, only to find themselves under attack by ferocious new enemies. Mana, a gentle young girl, must face these dangers with her people and somehow achieve her own peace as well as theirs.

Po’s Story

After Suth kills a leopard single handedly and leads his band of outcasts to safety, young Po wants to prove his bravery, too. But being brave is not as easy as it seems in a land of prehistoric danger.

Suth’s Story

When cut off from their kin and lost in the desert 200,000 years ago, Suth and five other orphans struggle to survive and to find their way to safety.

The Ropemaker

Tilja has grown up in the peaceful Valley, which is protected from the fearsome Empire by an enchanted forest. But the forest’s power has begun to fade and the Valley is in danger. Tilja is the youngest of four brave souls who venture into the Empire together to find the mysterious magician who can save the Valley. And much to her amazement, Tilja gradually learns that only she, an ordinary girl with no magical powers, has the ability to protect her group and their quest from the Empire s sorcerers.

From the Hardcover edition.

Angel Isle

The spellbinding sequel to the prizewinning novel The Ropemaker.

Once the twenty four most powerful magicians in the Empire pledged to use their magic only to protect the people. But the promise that bound them has now corrupted them. They have become a single, terrible entity with a limitless desire for domination. Only the Ropemaker may be able to stop them, but he has not been seen for more than two hundred years.

Into this dangerous world come Saranja, Maja, and Ribek. They seek the Ropemaker so that he might restore the ancient magic that protects their Valley. It is the task they were born to, but now it seems there is far more than the Valley at stake should they fail…
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The complex, multilayered story includes more heady explorations of magic, joined here by thoughts on the meaning of true love. This is sure to be a hit with fans of The Ropemaker . Booklist, Starred

A Kirkus Reviews Best Book for Young Adults
A USBBY CBC Outstanding International Book

The Dancing Bear

A Greek slave, his dancing bear, and an old holy man journey from Byzantium to rescue the slave’s young mistress from the Huns.

The Gift

Davy Price, a boy with erratic telepathic powers, finds himself in touch with the mind of a violent criminal, with whom his irresponsible father is also somehow involved. Originally published in 1973, this thrilling tale is from the writer whom Philip Pullman calls ‘one of the real masters of children’s literature.’

The Blue Hawk

The Blue Hawk is powerful, sacred, untameable. Its sacrifice will bring glory to the gods, strength to the nation and the success of evil plans by sinister priests. But when the gods command Tron, a temple boy, to rescue the bird and overturn the sacrifice, the destiny of the kingdom is placed in his hands. Hunted by temple assassins, Tron and his hawk flee into the blazing desert, where they are helped by an ambitious young king with dark secrets of his own. And soon they find themselves at the heart of a ferocious battle for the future of their world. ‘Magnificent. Peter Dickinson is the past master storyteller of our day’ ‘TLS’.

The Flight of Dragons

Combining fact with fantasy and science with romance, the authors set out to prove that dragons really did exist. First published in 1979, ‘The Flight of the Dragon’ presents a riveting thesis on how so great a creature as the dragon actually managed to fly. 140 illustrations, 100 in color .

Healer

Although grudgingly aware that ten year old Pinkie has extraordinary powers to heal, sixteen year old Barry becomes increasingly convinced that she is an unwilling participant at the healing sessions run by her enterprising stepfather.

Eva

Eva wakes…
She has been in a coma for eight months after a horrifying accident. She hears her mother murmer, ‘It’s all right. You’re going to be all right.’ But there’s something terrible in the voice…
Eva has changed. From now on she must live life that no one has ever lived before. A life that will change the world. ‘An outstanding novel.’ ‘Guardian’. ‘Shatteringly moving, intellectually demanding, relentlessly readable.’ ‘Junior Bookself’. ‘A remarkable work of science fiction. It has tenderness, humour and passion. It will not quickly leave the mind.’ ‘Times Literary Supplement’.

AK

Paul Kagomi’s most precious possession is his AK his gun. He is a warrior, a boy soldier, trained for a terrible war in the African bush. He doesn’t remember his real parents. For him his father is Michael, who leads the guerrilla group, and his mother is the war. Peace comes and Paul buries his gun and goes to school. But it does not last. Soldiers come to burn the school and kill the children, and Paul must flee through the bush to find his gun and then…
Will it be war once more or is there another way?

Play Dead

As Poppy Tasker sits at a play center with her grandson and listens to the idle chatter of the young nannies around her, she dreams about more exciting ways to spend the rest of her life, and her dreams are soon grotesquely realized.

A Bone from a Dry Sea

Two parallel stories present a young prehistoric female who is instrumental in advancing her people and a modern day girl who joins her father, a paleontologist, in discovering important fossil remains in Africa. AB. NYT. SLJ. H.

The Yellow Room Conspiracy

Thirty six years after a man dies mysteriously at the famous Vereker mansion, Lucy, one of the Vereker sisters, calls her lover, Paul, to her deathbed and asks him to help her solve the long ago mystery. NYT. PW.

Chuck and Danielle

Chuck is Danielle’s dog, a whippet who isn’t just timid she’s terrified, convinced that everything is coming to get her. But Danielle’s sure that Chuck will save the universe one day. In seven funny stories, Chuck does her best to make Danielle’s dream come true. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Some Deaths before Dying

The New York Times Book Review calls multiple award winner Peter Dickinson ‘a stylist of subtle brilliance’. Always surprising and incisive, the author of The Yellow Room Conspiracy and dozens of other unique novels returns with his first new book in five years; and proves again that in his masterful hands, powerful drama and devastating secrets can be found at the heart of even the smallest mysteries. For nearly her whole life, through most of the twentieth century, Rachel Matson saw the world through the lens of a camera, and produced stunning photographs that not only captured the moment but hinted at a greater truth. Now the ninety year old widow lies paralyzed, in the final stages of a debilitating illness. Yet while Rachel’s body may be useless, her spirit remains indomitable, her mind razor sharp, and her eye, the trained eye of an artist, still picks up the most telling details. Together with her vast collection of photographs, these gifts are about to help her meet an extraordinary challenge, as she confronts a shattering mystery that harkens back over the decades…
On a television program that showcases heirlooms, an antique pistol that belonged to her late husband, Colonel Jocelyn Matson, turns up, leaving Rachel bewildered and then profoundly disturbed. How could the prized Ladurie one of a matched pair of dueling pistols she had given to him to commemorate his return from the horrors of a Japanese POW camp appear hundreds of miles away in the possession of a stranger?Determined to learn the fate of Jocelyn’s gun, Rachel falls back on the one thing left to her her intellect and soon begins the painful process of teasing the past from the shadows. Whatemerges from the vivid shards of her memories is a mesmerizing tale of honor, passion, and betrayal that stretches from colonial India to modern day England…
a tale of a loving marriage interrupted by war, of a once proud reg

The Tears of the Salamander

O to live in the heart of such a fire, like a salamander!Alfredo, a choir boy in 18th century Italy, loses his family in a fire, and his mysterious Uncle Giorgio spirits him away to their ancestral home below a volcano. There he learns that Uncle Giorgio is the Master of the Mountain; he can control the volcano. He is also an alchemist, able to make gold from the tears of the fiery salamander he captured from the heart of the mountain. Alfredo is his heir, the next Master; and as Alfredo learns the history of his family and its power, he begins to suspect that his uncle is actually a fearsome sorcerer. From the Hardcover edition.

The Gift Boat

An unusual and moving story about the magical bond between a boy and his grandfather.

Does it just happen that Gavin and Grandad see the seal while they are fishing in the harbor? Just happen that Grandad talks about the selkies, the seal people who can leave the water and take human form? Just happen that Grandad is finishing the beautiful miniature boat he’s making for Gavin s tenth birthday, and Gavin decides to call her Selkie? And at that moment, Grandad has his stroke. Could the selkies have something to do with all this?

Day after day at the hospital, Gavin tries to get through to helpless and speechless Grandad, trying to reach him, explain what s happened to him. Everyone else has given up. But Gavin will try anything. Even asking the selkies to help. To do that, he must give them something to show them how much it matters. What is the dearest thing he owns?

From the Hardcover edition.

City of Gold

The re telling of 33 Old Testament stories using a different character as the ‘voice’ for each tale. The author won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award for ‘The Blue Hawk’ and ‘AK’. The illustrator, Michael Foreman, has won the Kurt Maschler ‘Emil’ Award and the Francis Williams Award twice.

Water

Master storytellers Robin McKinley and Peter Dickinson share tales of mysterious merfolk and magical humans, all with close ties to the element of Water. From Pitiable Nasmith’s miserable existence in a seaside town whose inhabitants are more intertwined with the sea than most people know, to Tamia’s surprising summons to be the apprentice to the Guardian who has the power to hold back the sea, each of the six stories illuminates a captivating world filled with adventure, romance, intrigue, and enchantment. Robin McKinley fans will recognize one of the worlds included Damar, the setting of Newbery Medal winner The Hero and the Crown and Newbery Honor Book The Blue Sword.

Fire

Master storytellers Robin McKinley and Peter Dickinson, the team behind Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits, collaborate again to create five captivating tales incorporating the element of fire. In McKinley’s First Flight, a boy and his pet foogit unexpectedly take a dangerous ride on a dragon, and her Hellhound stars a mysterious dog as a key player in an eerie graveyard showdown. Dickinson introduces a young man who must defeat the creature threatening his clan in Fireworm, a slave who saves his village with a fiery magic spell in Salamander Man, and a girl whose new friend, the guardian of a mystical bird, is much older than he appears in Phoenix. With time periods ranging from prehistoric to present day, and settings as varied as a graveyard, a medieval marketplace and a dragon academy, these stories are sure to intrigue and delight the authors longtime fans and newcomers alike.