Sometimes, when you open a door or lift a lid, you find exactly what you expected to find: coats in the coat cupboard, bread in the bread bin, toys in the toy box. And sometimes you don't.

When Sunny's parents buy an antique shop, they get more than they bargained for: in some of the old furniture, Sunny finds ghosts. Each of the ghosts has an unfulfilled desire, something they never did in their lifetime: Walter wants to learn to read, Violet wants to write a novel, Mary and Elsie want to go to the seaside. While Sunny is trying to help them all, it seems someone else is out to cause trouble...

About the Author
Alison Moore's first novel, The Lighthouse, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Awards (New Writer of the Year), winning the McKitterick Prize. Both The Lighthouse and her second novel, He Wants, were Observer Books of the Year. Her short fiction has been included in Best British Short Stories and Best British Horror anthologies, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra and collected in The Pre-War House and Other Stories. Born in Manchester in 1971, she lives near Nottingham with her husband Dan and son Arthur. Ross Collins was born in Glasgow, Scotland quite a while ago. At that time would eat anything and resembled a currant bun. Ross still enjoys precariously swinging backwards on chairs. He lives in Glasgow with a strange woman, a small child and a stupid dog.

Reviews

A delightful and satisfying read for any age.

-- Jackie Law * Neverimitate *

Moore's charming novel, skilfully illustrated by Collins, is about an antique shop whose furniture is haunted by ghosts with unfulfilled dreams and the boy who befriends them.

-- Nicolette Jones * The Sunday Times *

The plot moves along quickly, and once Sunny finds one ghost, more seem to appear every day, popping up in all sorts of odd places around the shop. It's all jolly, apart from the puzzle of who, or what, is behind the trouble in the shop. Sunny's parents seem inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, and don't blame him for it, but I'm not sure they really believe his tale of ghosts either. With a little help from his spectral friends though Sunny manages to track down the trouble maker, and find a way to settle the problem. Further stories are planned so this looks like being the beginning of quite an adventure for Sunny and the Ghosts.

* Our Book Reviews *

The story is set in an old junk shop in Devon stuffed with more than its fair share of ghosts, who arrive, wistfully attached to the bric-a-brac, in the state in which they died. There's pyjama-clad Herbert; Walter, a miner who never learned to read (Sunny teaches him); Violet, who's writing a novel (in a meta-literary touch, it turns out to be Sunny and the Ghosts); and many others, including a mischief-maker who fills the shop with cats. This is a gentle, intelligent and warm novel about friendship and imagination for children of seven and up.

-- Philip Womack * Literary Review *



Book Information
ISBN 9781784631260
Author Alison Moore
Format Paperback
Page Count 96
Imprint Salt Publishing
Publisher Salt Publishing
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 7mm