Most Popular Books by Robert Westall

''Nobody breaks up this gang. And I mean nobody. Not Boddser, not the police, not your folks and definitely not the Germans. This is our territory and I will fight to the death for this place.'' The gripping story of Chas McGill and his school friends offers a vivid account of life in The Blitz.

Tom Higgins, a British schoolboy during the Persian Gulf War, narrates his younger brother''s struggle with an apparent mental illness or "mystery of nature" which drives the child to assume the role of an Iraqi.

There were three people, standing in the darkest place, watching him. Simon is outraged that his Mum plans to remarry. He can''t bear her new fiancé or the way his mother and sister seem to have forgotten his late father. Overwhelmed by hatred and anger he seeks solace in a nearby abandoned water mill. But another, powerful hatred lingers within its walls. And it is about to be unleashed... Westall''s immense talent is evident from the opening line - Simon''s anger and unhappiness are tangible, and the Scarecrows'' ill-intentions terrifying.

She made her way down the cliff, and on to the beach. At the edge of the waves, she stopped, shaking her wet paws. She knew that somewhere ahead was her person, but far, far away. She miaowed plaintively; stood staring at the moving blur of uncrossable sea. She led the way to safety, out of the blazing hell of blitzed Coventry. People touched her for luck; feared her as an omen of disaster. Wherever she went, she changed lives . . . From her beginning to her end she never wavered. She was the Blitzcat. Blitzcat by Robert Westall is the Smarties Prize-winning book about one brave cat''s experiences during World War Two. Now with a brilliant new cover look and including an extended author biography.

Guaradian award winning novel about courage, friendship and war. Reissued into the Essential Modern Classic list.

YA. A boy promises his life to a girl who dies. She pulls him to the brink of his own life during WWII.

“I dreamt I was standing in the dark, looking up at the south-west tower . . . And our Kev was up there on top, in the dark, and screaming as if some wild beast was eating him.” When steeplejack Joe Clarke is hired to repair the stonework at Muncaster Cathedral, he is unprepared for the horror he will encounter. Something unspeakably evil in the medieval tower is seeking victims among the young neighborhood boys ... and Joe’s son may be next! An unsettling story with a horrifying conclusion, this eerie tale will chill young and old readers alike. Robert Westall (1929-1993) is one of the best modern writers of ghost stories in the tradition of the great M.R. James, and The Stones of Muncaster Cathedral, which won the Dracula Society’s Children of the Night Award, is one of his finest. This volume also includes a second ghostly tale, ‘Brangwyn Gardens’, published here for the first time in the United States, and a new introduction by Orrin Grey.

Six tales, set in England, in which people engaged in ordinary pursuits attract the attention of supernatural forces.

''Ninety-eight keys, none of them labelled. Ninety-eight keys, and they say there are ninety-nine rooms . . . What will you find in the ninety-ninth room, I wonder?'' Maggi is delighted when her father takes a new job, renovating a crumbling stately home in Cheshire. It''s a chance to escape from the North-East, from the predatory Doris Streeton, and perhaps from the grief at the heart of Maggi''s family. But Maggi gradually comes to realize that their new home holds secrets far more sinister than anything they have left behind . . .

SUMMARY: Set during the Second World War. Chas McGill desperately wanted his war souvenircollection to be the best. His chance came when he found the crashed German Heinkel, with a machine-gun and all its ammunition intact; all he had to do was to remove it from the plane.

It''s 1940, and Britain is at war. Young Chas McGill has the second-best collection of war souvenirs in town, but desperately wants it to be the best. Amidst the bombs and air raids, Chas and his friends plan their own war effort in their newly built bunker. Friendships are forged and loyalties tested, in the adventure of a lifetime. Robert Westall''s "The Machine Gunners" has been read, studied - and loved - by successive generations of younger readers. It won the Carnegie Medal and was voted one of the most important children''s novels of the past seventy years. This thrilling stage adaptation comes from the award-winning playwright Ali Taylor, and premiered at the Polka Theatre, London. It provides rich opportunities for discussion in the classroom, and for staging by schools, youth theatres and amateur companies.

While visiting his mother and new stepfather whom he hates, an English teenager is terrorized by three scarecrows embodying people who met violent death and who silently threaten the entire family.