The Feral Child - Hardcover

"Gripping, mystical and adventurous, young readers will be as hooked as Maddy was the minute she set foot inside that creepy as hell old castle," Irish World said of The Feral Child.

Maddy, an orphan, is sick of her Irish town, and sick of her cousin Danny, one of the nastiest people you could meet. Mad as hell one evening, she crawls inside the grounds of the castle, the one place she has always been forbidden to go. Once inside, she is chased by a strange feral boy, who she suspects is one of the faerie: cruel, fantastical people who live among humans and exchange local children for their own.

When the boy returns to steal her neighbor Stephen into his world, Maddy and her cousins set off on a terrifying journey into a magical wilderness, determined to bring him back home. To do so, they must face an evil as old as the earth itself.

Che Golden has created a gripping adventure that interweaves Maddy's modern Irish experience with the vivid fantasy of the region's ancient folklore. Readers will enjoy the frank and bold heroine of Maddy, and will be dazzled by The Feral Child's evocative rendering of Irish folklore and richly imagined alternate worlds.

Che Golden spent most of her childhood in Blarney Village in the shade of Blarney Castle, an ideal spot for a child with an overactive imagination who was inclined to spy unicorns in the woods and fairies in the fucshia bushes. As a young girl, she also read Stephen King's novels under the duvet by flashlight, they still give her nightmares, but they also proved to be a great influence on her writing, as has C.S. Lewis's Narnia books and Holly Black's Modern Faierie Tales. Before turning to novel writing full-time, Che was a journalist, ran her own e-zine, and earned a graduate degree in creative writing. When she's not writing, she enjoys tending to her horses, taking her manic terrier for walks, finding a good excuse to get dressed up, and snuggling up on the couch with her family watching movies. She lives in Bath, England. For more information on Che and her books, please visit: http://chegolden.wordpress.com