Toadstone

Tilly and Mattan return to the creepy Runes to find out about lurking crows, exploding frogs and the mystery of the missing black cats. Not that it's too unusual for Matilda Peppercorn - guardian-to-be, ace kick-boxer, and potentially different species. But is she the legend? Someone's too close for comfort - and they have different ideas.The second in the TLOMP quartet about magical mayhem-creator and soon-to-be legend, Matilda Peppercorn. From Jill Marshall, author of the best-selling Jane Blonde series, TLOMP is also a SWAGG Origin Story. Meet Tilly, Blonde and team in the first in the S*W*A*G*G series, Spook. Jill Marshall is the author of the best-selling Jane Blonde series and fiction for children, young adults and adults. Her middle-grade series about sensational girl spy, Jane Blonde,published by Macmillan Children's Books UK, has sold hundreds of thousands of copies around the world, featured as a World Book Day title and reached the UK Times Top 10 for all fiction. Jane Blonde has been optioned for film and TV and is currently undergoing some exciting Wower-ish transformations.Jill has now brought Jane together with her other series in this age group - Doghead, The Legend of Matilda Peppercorn, Stein & Frank - in a fantastic new ensemble series. Meet the SWAGG team, and their first book, SPOOK.As well as books for tweens and teens, Jill writes for young adults and adults, each with a collection of three stand-alone novels. She also writes for younger children, with a Hachette-published picture book for teenies, Kave-Tina Rox.When she's not writing books, Jill is a communications consultant and a proud mum and nana. She divides her time between the UK and New Zealand, and hopes one day to travel between the two by SatiSPI or ESPIdrilles. Matilda Peppercorn is just your regular nearly-teenager - adopted from Russia by her adoring parents; best friends with another Matilda (though she's from Sweden so they call her Mattan) and, obviously, a superbly excellent kick-boxer who wants nothing more than to get some belts to her name.But then three weirdy women start showing up. They're lurking. They're ticking her off some list. And they're sizing her up to be something - not someone, someTHING - that Tilly can't quite get her head around. Because Tilly is the girl who will be guardian of them all. The whole weird kit-and-caboodle. She's been chosen to save the lot of them. But can she? And does she even want to?Join Tilly and Mattan for magical mayhem and mad mysteries as they make new friends and even more enemies, in the search for lessons on just how one not-so-ordinary girl can become a living legend.From Jill Marshall, author of the best-selling series about girl spy Jane Blonde, comes a new heroine. She's funny, she's feisty, she's a Flying Matilda. And Matilda Peppercorn is ready to take on the world.TLOMP is also a SWAGG Origin Story. Meet Tilly again in SWAGG 1, 2 and especially 3, Sorcery...