Now available in paperback - an extraordinary story about friendship and betrayal, revenge and retribution, but also redemption. Ideal for 11+ readers who enjoy Stranger Things. Shortlisted for the Yoto Carnegie Medal for Illustration in 2023.

'Luxuriantly illustrated by the fabulous Levi Pinfold. This exceptional book about friendship and paths not taken should rake in awards.' Observer

Hex never meant for the girl to follow him and his best friend Tommo into the woods. He certainly never meant for her to fall off the rope swing and break her arm. When he gets blamed for the accident, Hex runs deep into the woods, ending up in a strange clearing that he has never come across before. There he meets an old woman who offers him a deal. She'll rid the world of those who wronged him and Hex can carry on his life with them all forgotten and as if nothing ever happened. But what Hex doesn't know is someone else has been offered the same deal.

When Tommo wakes up the next day, he is in a completely different world, with only the vaguest memories of the world before. Can Tommo put the world right again? Back to how it was? Or can he even find a way to make a new world that could be better for them all?

This is a gripping and surreal contemporary fairytale that fans of David Almond will love.

A.F. Harrold is an English poet who spends his time onstage, writing poems and books, and stroking his beard (it helps churn the ideas). He is the author of The Song from Somewhere Else (illustrated by Levi Pinfold), the Fizzlebert Stump series and the CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medal longlisted The Imaginary (illustrated by Emily Gravett). He lives in Reading with a stand-up comedian and two cats.

Levi Pinfold has been drawing from imagination for as long as he can remember. His published picture books are The Django, Black Dog and Greenling. Black Dog won the prestigious CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal in 2013. Born in the Forest of Dean, he has somehow found himself living in northern NSW, Australia. He likes paintings, books, music and some cats.