Eleven-year-old Bella Bright has just moved into Darkling House in Castleton. On her first day at her new school, she is spotted by a pair of manipulative mean girls, Skylar and Regan. They push her into inviting them to a Halloween sleepover. Another much friendlier girl, Lex, comes to Bella's rescue and offers to join the sleepover to support Bella, who is delighted to be making a real friend.

On Halloween night, things start getting spooky for the four girls, when the huge front door appears to shut itself, and their mobile phones lose signal. They decide to order pizza using the landline, but a hair-raising whisper comes down the line.

Skylar suggests they play hide and seek, but as she utters the words, the house appears to wobble and they discover all the exits are impossibly locked. Bella searches the manor and a ghostly teenage girl appears in front of her. She reveals herself to be Alice, a young girl who died in the house 150 years ago during a game of hide and seek gone terribly wrong. She has hidden Bella's three friends, and gives Bella a rhyming clue to find them in the enormous and cavernous house.

Bella has until midnight. After that, Alice will get to keep the girls as her playmates for ever...

A spooky middle-grade ghost story set on the night of Halloween. If Bella can't find her new friends before midnight in a terrifying game of hide and seek, then Alice the ghost gets to keep them as her playmates forever...

About the Author
Carolyn Ward (Author)
Carolyn Ward studied for an English degree in Wolverhampton, UK, before moving to Manchester, where she rode horses around Manchester City's training ground and nearly fell in the river. Now settled in South Staffordshire and mum to three, she writes MG horror. In her spare time she enjoys shopping for haunted antiques and unusual tarot cards.

Beatriz Castro (Illustrator)
Beatriz Castro was born in La Rioja, Spain in 1985. When she was a little girl, she was always drawing and writing stories. She studied illustration at the school of arts in her home town, Logrono. After graduating, she embarked on a career as a professional illustrator and has since been published by many international publishing houses. She especially enjoys creating funny characters. Beatriz likes animals, classic stories and fairy tales and listens to rock and punk music.




Book Information
ISBN 9781801300957
Author Carolyn Ward
Format Paperback
Page Count 288
Imprint Welbeck Children's Books
Publisher Hachette Children's Group