Darren Bane – författare

When little Lucy spends the first night at her grandparents'' house without her own Mummy and Daddy, she feels afraid. So her Daddy gives her a new friend, a lovely bear called Patrick.Patrick waits for Lucy in the ''creepy room'' where Lucy has been sleeping. Patrick is Lucy''s special sleepover friend. But who will keep Patrick company when Lucy is not there?The answer to this lies inside a dusty old toy cupboard in a dark corner of the room. Before long, everybody has some New Friends.

Matthew was born three months early, and spent the first six months of his life at St Michael''s Hospital in Bristol, England, which specialises in caring for premature and critically-ill newborns.This record of the emotional rollercoaster his parents experienced may give other parents of premature babies an idea of what to expect, and inspire them to find the strength to believe that where there''s life, there''s hope because sometimes, miracles do happen.

Brave bear Patrick agrees to play hide & seek for the very first time with his new friends. But one of them seems to be a bit too good at hiding, which leads to another day full of adventure - and mysteries!Where is Poodie hiding? Whatever happened to Orangey's missing squeaker? Where did Little Walt's beloved red ribbon go?And then there is the biggest mystery of all - just what is the monster beneath the bed?

''A Wicked Tongue is worse than any fiend.'' (Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales: The Manciple''s Tale, 1395).Tongues are wagging in a sleepy English seaside town after a well-respected couple die within weeks of each other.Businessman Sam Shepton killed himself. At his inquest, his heartbroken son blamed his mother, Amanda, branding her a ''black widow''. A few days later he discovers her body.The talking begins, accusations are made, secret lives are revealed.Was Amanda killed because of her husband''s death? Was her murder a ''personal'' crime or the start of a serial-killer spree?Everyone''s words have consequences and it''s clear that careless talk really CAN cost lives...Author Vicki Fitzgerald (Briguella, Kill List) described this book as "Wickedly warped. Sensational. A chilling, compulsive, character-driven thriller with a killer twist."

Christmas! Cut-throats! Cribbage??!!??Christmas is coming, but the season of goodwill has bypassed pub landlord Ted Edwards. A critical review in a best-selling travel book adds insult to infamy and threatens to be the final nail in the coffin for Ted''s troubled alehouse, where the regular cribbage league contest is the social highlight of every week.A prophetic premonition leaves Ted with a stark choice: call ''last orders'' for the very final time or mend his miserly ways, embrace his hostelry''s history, make peace with his family''s pirate past, re-capture his Christmas spirt and save his beloved bar, prompting a pub ''treasure hunt'' like no other.This is the final part of ''The Jolly Roger'' trilogy, three stand-alone but loosely connected stories about a fictional pub and some of its clientele. The first book in the trilogy is The Big One and the second book is Uncle Prawn.