Synopsis
Dreamy tomboy, Laila meets Cyril, a rebellious gnome and passes through a charmed gate into the Wolf Garden. Here, she does battle with the shape-shifter Smarm and his army of wolves. When Smarm captures her gnome friends and steals the magic strawbs, Laila and Cyril help the Mistress Dido win them back.
A Cautionary Note
When you enter the Garden, inevitably, and perhaps none too surprisingly, you will find that you leave something behind. When you are in the Garden, you may find – to your surprise or indeed unwittingly - something different. That something different you may take out of the Garden if you so please. Some people may be lost in the Garden. And yet some people may find themselves in the Garden. Others may leave the Garden and never come back. Not all people will remember the Garden. Although if they do, they may find they will be curiously, indeed remarkably enriched by having visited it.
From Mr. Whizz’s Notebook: Concerning the Garden, a thing rarum.
***
It was a matter of some urgency; a wolf was loose in the woods. And being loose in the woods, he could get into the garden.
“Whatever you do,” said Dad. “Don’t go out the gate. You don’t want the wolf to eat you.”
“By the way,” said Mum, “don’t forget to take your apple.”
She went out the door, but the wolf was already in the garden.
She turned tail and ran.
“I must reach the Beech House,” she told herself. “It won’t get me in the Beech House.”
The wolf snapped at her heels as she scampered up the tree and onto the platform of the Beech House.
After a while, the wolf went away. She climbed down from the tree and ran back towards the house, but the wolf was waiting for her.
“There you are!” he cried. “I was wondering where you got to.”
“What are you doing here?” she said. “This is my garden.”
“It may be your garden,” said the wolf. “But once I turn you, you’ll be in my garden.”
About the Authors
Sedley was born in Poole, Dorset and grew up in West London where visits to the local library instilled in him a life-long love of books. Sedley always loved writing and English. In fact, when he was eleven, he began a historical novel, now lost to posterity, but, if memory serves, in the style of Henry Treece and Ronald Welch. At school in Winchester he started to dream about a writing career, and was even lucky enough to win a prize for a short story, the title of which he has now forgotten. For some reason, however, the final line sticks in his mind. Was it a living or waking dream? - No, she must be dead. After a brief flirtation with archaeology, he studied English at Nottingham University where he was tutored, for a term, by the Northern Irish poet, Tom Paulin. In the 1990s, he worked in fringe theatre and was involved in productions of Macbeth and Bertolt Brecht's In the Jungle of Cities. His own play, Salt Lake Psycho about the notorious murderer, Gary Gilmore was put on at the now defunct Man in the Moon theatre in Chelsea. Salt Lake Psycho was directed by Sean Holmes, current associate artistic director at Shakespeare's Globe. For the best part of two decades, Sedley lived and worked as a teacher and translator in Southern Italy. Here he collaborated with French writer, Claude Albanese on the screenplay of Dirty Waters. Dirty Waters, which is a political thriller, written with Italian blood, English sweat and French tears, received a commendation at the 2003 Montpellier Festival. In Italy Sedley continued to experiment with his writing, devising an invented dialect for a novel about a young female brigand of the Risorgimento. He also experimented with performance poetry, accompanying local blues band, Big Daddy Lawman on their tours of Apulian taverns, churches and bars. Returning to Britain in 2013, Sedley wrote The Half Days (2015), an ex-pat adventure set in Southern Italy. He struck up a writing partnership with Tony Henderson. Together they quickly published two books: Over & Under i (2015) and Over & Under ii (2016), a series of naughty tales, inspired by the tales of the Arabian Nights. The Over & Under Series has subsequently morphed into the Naughty Stories Series. The first in this series, Ten Naughty Stories was published in 2019 under the pen name, M. T. Sands. Sedley has also published the sequel to The Half Days under the title, Accidental Death of a Terrorist. Accidental Death of a Terrorist (2019) is the second part of the Mezzogiorno Trilogy. Sedley and Tony have written a children's book, The Wolf Garden, under the alias F. M. Frites: A Totally, Completely, and Utterly Bodacious Adventure with Unicorns and Gnomes.
Tony was born in Winchester, Hampshire. His father was a businessman, author and publisher of books, and his mother a theatrical actress, giving him a life-long love of books, theatre and story-telling. A graduate of Edinburgh University, Tony has trodden the line between liberal arts and technology through spells in the music industry, television and digital innovation. Tony also runs a thought leadership network in Oxford. He has written a book about business and technology, The Leopard in the Pinstripe Suit (2013) and a book of comic poems, Flat Squirrel (2015).
F.M. Frites is a member of the Italian Order of Magicians and Illusionists. He grew in a small village in Sicily and attended the university of Sarcastica where he had a holiday job in the Hilton hotel. Known to his friends as Umberto, he trained with the Bengali Circus of Sandokan and his burning tigers. Now he travels the world performing his tricks and sleights of hand under the watchful eye of striped beasts.
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