Tom Trueheart and the Land of Dark Stories - Softcover

[Praise for The Secret History of Tom Trueheart, Boy Adventurer]: 'a delightful book, and one with a wide potential audience . . . a story with a timeless quality and great charm for bedtime reading upwards. (Marcus Sedgwick, The Literary Review)

This handsome little book with striking silhouette illustrations, contains a wonderful story. (Julia Eccleshare, lovereadingforkids.com)

Tom's quest to discover his own story and his courage unrolls through an elegantly described magical landscape, in this skilful, highly inventive story about the way stories work. (Booktrust)

Looks likely to become one of the hits of 2006 (Amanda Craig, The Times)

Ian Beck's prose has a crisp and springy rhythm - a treat to read aloud to anyone over the age of six. His illustrations, gnarled silhouettes, are marvellously complex. If you turn them upside down, they change completely. A volume to treasure. (The Telegraph)

Another brilliant fictional concept is the Land of Stories in Ian Beck's The Secret History of Tom Trueheart... The book is guaranteed to enthral children, and adults will laugh at the sly in-jokes. Ian Beck's prose has a crisp and springy rhythm - a treat to read aloud to anyone over the age of six... A volume to treasure. (The Telegraph)

The Trueheart house is busy and bustling-because today is a special day. Tom's older brothers are getting married and preparing to live happily ever after.

But then an unexpected wedding guest arrives. Someone who has decided that there will be no more Happy Endings. Tom's brothers and their brides are whisked off to the Land of Dark Stories, as prisoners of their old enemy Brother Ormestone. And Tom himself is put under a terrible enchantment...

It is up to Tom to try to save the others, and to bring back Happy Endings. But how can he defeat the storybook monsters now that he is only the size of a thumb?